Norway Launches Regional Cancer Care

BASILDON, England, September 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, Helse Sør-Øst RHF, have signed a deal to roll out JAC's Chemotherapy Management System (CMS) across its 17 health Trusts, satellite clinics and seven chemotherapy production pharmacies in order to help improve the quality of cancer care and patient safety across the whole region. 

The contract award directly to JAC underpins Helse Sør-Øst RHF's 'Digital Modernisation Initiative - for Improved Patient Safety and Quality of Care'. It also spearheads a new regional shared-services programme for the standardisation and consolidation of technologies with the aim of improving accessibility to healthcare for the 2.8 million population living in the region.

Norway's mountainous landscape and snowy winters make travelling and accessing health services difficult all year round. After world-wide research, JAC's CMS solution was identified by Helse Sør-Øst RHF as offering a unique set of capabilities - including meeting their key requirement of a truly regional solution capable of supporting the delivery of cancer care to patients irrespective of where they reside.

By taking a regional approach, Helse Sør-Øst RHF aims to improve the cancer patients' experience by eliminating the need to travel regularly to a main treatment facility for their weekly chemotherapy treatments and for follow up assessments. Their medication can be prepared in any of one of the region's seven pharmacy production units for local delivery. In addition, the regional solution enables multi-disciplinary teams of professionals to remotely monitor the progress of patients' treatment and make adjustments to their medication.

Commenting on the deal with JAC, CEO at Helse Sør-Øst RHF, Cathrine M. Lofthus, said: "This is an important project for South-Eastern Regional Health Authority, and part of our strategy to establish common, standardised regional solutions that will directly improve patient safety and quality of care."

JAC's CMS is one of the few systems that can truly support paperless or paper-light aseptic compounding in the chemotherapy pharmacy. CMS can also be configured for gravimetric production using digital weigh scales and bar coding technology. The oncology pharmacists working within an aseptic unit's isolator cabinet can connect any (approved) digital weigh scales to weigh the product ingredients, rather than measuring them by volume, which further automates the pharmacy workflow, reduces risk and improves safety.

Chief Executive at JAC, Rob Tysall-Blay, noted: "While a lot of traditional chemotherapy electronic prescribing systems may be good for doctors and for nurses, they fall short in managing the patient's safety. The safety-critical compounding and production aspect needs to be closely linked up with prescribing and administering. If these are not all fully aligned and integrated, opportunities are left wide open throughout the patient journey and the hospital work-flow for errors to creep in. CMS closes down all of those potential error-points and makes for a much safer 'closed-loop' system, which can easily be validated to the latest GAMP5 standard - which is the international gold standard for quality and safety."

"We are delighted to welcome Norway to our growing family of JAC Medicine Management users. The CMS contract with Helse Sør-Øst RHF is a strategic new business win and puts our innovative CMS solution squarely onto the map against established competition. We already have over 12 sites using CMS in the Netherlands and Belgium and in the last few months we've won four new contracts to implement CMS at NHS hospitals and oncology treatment centres. This Helse Sør-Øst RHF contract, along with the others recently won, are significant votes of confidence in our product and JAC's track record for successful implementations," Mr Tysall-Blay concluded.

The system is expected to be rolled out for operational use before the end of 2016. JAC will lead the initial implementations across two production units which support three localities before Helse Sør-Øst RHF takes responsibility for deployment throughout the rest of the region with technical support from JAC. The roll out of CMS will form a blueprint for Helse Sør-Øst RHF to follow when rolling out future regional clinical systems as a shared regional service fully integrated to its enterprise-wide electronic patient record/journal (EPR/EPJ) systems.

About JAC  

JAC is the UK's leading medicine management systems specialist, with the largest installed base of EPMA systems in UK hospitals. With over 30 years' experience within medicines management, JAC provides pharmacy stock control, e-prescribing and medicines administration as a single integrated solution along with associated services and third-party interfaces. JAC's systems are used in more than half of all NHS trusts in England as well as sites in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Norway and South Africa.

In May 1996, JAC was acquired by Mediware Inc and continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. The acquisition by Mediware Inc created the world's largest supplier of medicines management systems for hospital pharmacies. 

For more information about JAC products and services, visit our website at jac.co.uk.

About Mediware Information Systems Inc 

Mediware delivers interoperable best-of-breed software systems that improve efficiencies and address safety concerns, enabling healthcare organisations to improve care processes while decreasing costs.

Core Mediware solutions include blood management technologies for hospitals and blood centres; cell therapy solutions for cord blood banks, cancer treatment centres and research facilities; medication management solutions for hospitals, behavioural health facilities, infusion and specialty pharmacy providers; business intelligence-based performance management solutions for clinical, regulatory and financial aspects of the broader healthcare market; and rehabilitation therapy and respiratory care solutions.

For more information about Mediware products and services, visit our website at http://www.mediware.com.

Contact:

Joan Povey, [email protected] or [email protected]

SOURCE JAC Medicines Management