The ORA continues to lead among medical specialties in the adoption and implementation of digital health technology solutions. One of the flagship mechanisms for learning and dissemination of these practices is through our annual membership engagement event. In the past, this event has centered around EMR uptake and adoption. With the incredible success of the ORA’s efforts in EMR adoption, we continue to evolve the aims and benefits to ORA members through this event.
This year, the ORA’s technology event was re-branded as the Digital Health Technology Day, spearheaded by ORA President Dr. Jane Purvis and supported by the ORA’s Informatics Committee and Administrative Lead, Sandy Kennedy. Record attendance during the 2019 DHTD caused us to have to book a larger venue to host the event!
During the full-day DHTD, ORA members were exposed to targeted and general technology solutions including presentations from the Ministry of Health’s EAP electronic submission platform known as SADIE (Special Authorization Digital Information Exchange), the Ontario eConsult Service, Connecting Ontario, and expert training sessions from EMR platform-specific leaders tailored to comfort-level for all meeting registrants.
The ORDER Project
A wealth of information exists in our EMRs, but it is difficult to analyze and often incomplete. To overcome this challenge, the ORA is building on our long-standing strength in EMR uptake by Ontario’s rheumatologists. This is known as the ORDER (ORA Rheumatic Diseases Evaluation Registry) project.
The vision for the ORDER project is to achieve the best care possible for patients with rheumatic diseases in Ontario. ORDER will support Ontario’s rheumatologists and alleviate the administrative burdens that make it harder to deliver care.
Patient assessment at a glance: The ORDER Patient Viewer will provide rheumatologists with a rapid data collection interface that is easier than dictating notes and generates insights instantly for point-of-care decision-making.
Practice insights when we need them: The ORDER Outcomes Dashboard will serve up actionable practice-level insights to identify patients with unperceived needs between visits, opportunities to improve our practice efficiency and quality, and the ability to track our own progress over time.
Project Update
In January 2020, the Informatics Committee met and were joined with the technology providers who have been selected to work with the ORA to develop and deliver the ORDER platform to ORA rheumatologists. Multiple task forces were defined to identify and address the specific needs of users who are using different EMR platforms, shape the list of indicators that will be used in the first iteration of the Outcomes Dashboard, and determine the elements and appearance of the Patient Viewer. Project Management will be provided by Atlysian Solutions Inc. and in the coming weeks will be connecting with ORA members who are interested in this project to collect and integrate the ideas and needs of ORA members. As with all ORA works, the ORDER project is an ORA member-driven initiative. The ORA Informatics Committee continues to invite and appreciates the feedback of all ORA members and stakeholders. Please send us your thoughts and ideas at admin@ontariorheum.ca. More information is available on the ORA website.
