Patients at the University Hospital of Geneva have received a boost to the quality of their healthcare following the implementation of a new electronic information system. Designed with the support of Knowledge Management Company, IBEX, the system allows doctors to radically improve the time it takes to access complete patient records from departments across the hospital. By reducing the time taken to collate all medical details required for diagnosis medical staff have more time for patients thereby improving productivity and the quality of care.

Like many other hospitals across the globe, the University Hospital of Geneva has been confronted with all the problems of a paper-based system to store and retrieve patient information. As this is commonly archived in designated areas and departments, healthcare professionals are often faced with a time-consuming and frustrating task when attempting to form a diagnosis and issue treatment to a patient whom they have never treated before.

Employing techniques learnt at CERN ( the world renown high energy physics laboratory), IBEX has developed products specifically designed for University Hospital of Geneva and in conjunction with the European initiative on healthcare, SynEx. Called "Uniform" and "F.A.S.T", these products together with sophisticated object modelling techniques, present a full electronic history of a patient’s medical background (known as an Electronic Healthcare Record or E.H.R.) which can even include x-ray images.

As Professor Geissbuhler of HUG explains, "The paper-based system meant waiting for a patient’s health details to be forwarded – sometimes from more than one place. This means waiting too long. If a seriously ill patient is admitted to the Emergency Room, a Doctor needs a full medical background – psychiatric history, allergies to drugs and so on - to be made immediately available."

Cheryll Gerelle, Managing Director of IBEX explains, "Data retrieval should be as fast as the human can digest the information. This natural ability is hampered by computer applications that cannot deal with many distributed sources of information, such as that in a medical record. If we can imagine having ‘just-in-time’ information, created as needed by a doctor or hospital, then we can start to think about higher quality healthcare and treatment".

University Hospital of Geneva has one of the foremost E.H.R. implementations in Europe. Professor Geissbuhler believes that technology such as Electronic Healthcare Records can only improve the quality of care, every healthcare professional’s goal. "With the installation of E.H.R. the benefits came from more accurate diagnosis and rapid treatment. With patient records available via one interface, the system avoids unnecessary tests and time wasting so also becoming a cost-cutting solution. The system shows great promise for the use of advanced technology in healthcare, and reflects a huge potential for the global practice of medicine as a unified body."

With the success of the E.H.R. already proven, the next stage of the project is currently underway. This stage involves linking the General Practitioners to a secure Extranet so that Geneva GPs will also experience similar benefits to that of the hospital physicians.

IBEX Knowledge Systems S.A. is a provider of Knowledge Management solutions, Healthcare products, and development and consulting services.

Specialising in object-oriented technology products, IBEX is the owner of the ITASCA Distributed Object Database Management System. The functionality of ITASCA has been extended into a Knowledge Management framework, which supports IBEX's assessment methodology, legacy systems integration, enterprise modelling and management decision support tools.

IBEX Knowledge Systems SA is based at: Morgines Business Centre, 12 Avenue des Morgines, CH-1213 Petit-Lancy, Geneva, Switzerland. Tel +41-(0)22-8798850, fax: +41-(0)22-8798851, Email: info@ibex.ch

Selwyn Peel
IBEX Knowledge Systems
Tel: +44 (0)1335 324609