COH Selects Wairever’s Plexina for Automating Order Set Management

LOS ANGELES, CA, February 28, 2013--City of Hope is implementing its EHR to provide the best care for its patients, and is capitalizing on the expert knowledge of its world leading clinical research to do so. COH is now using Wairever Inc.’s Plexina, a Clinical Knowledge Management automation platform, which can rapidly convert evidence and research knowledge into order sets for the EHR.

By using Plexina, clinical knowledge of expert clinicians is systematically transformed with a quality centric process into executable electronic guidance embedded in the EHR. Clinicians benefit from the guidance of evidence-based medicine and world-leading research, helping them make better decisions, keep up with latest techniques, and reduce errors. Patients will have access to the best possible care experience, from diagnosis, through treatment, and recovery, with supporting expert knowledge consistently available throughout the process.

"Plexina is the first solution of its kind," notes Wairever Inc’s CEO Basil Baluta. "We exist to give health systems a viable way to develop, deploy and maintain high-quality patient care knowledge, in the many ways it can manifest, into the EHR at a cost far lower than a traditional EHR implementation plan. Our clients are not only achieving meaningful use, or streamlining clinical content development processes, but are also truly innovating care for the patient. They are balancing standardization with personalization and enabling these requirements as electronic order sets, structured documentation, care pathways, and other clinical decision support tools in an EHR and other types of clinical information systems.”

City of Hope, a nationally known cancer, diabetes and HIV research and treatment center in Southern California, is only one of a number of institutions that have adopted Wairever’s Plexina.

According to Naveen Raja, Chief Medical Information Officer for City of Hope, “We understand the importance of rapidly converting evidence and research knowledge into order sets. As we bring that knowledge to the front lines of care through our clinical information system, it helps us make the best medical decisions and provide the best care possible.”

Medical science, and EHR systems produce large amounts of data, which means health systems must have processes, people, and tools in place to isolate the most useful information. Putting the right knowledge, in the right place, in the right way, at the right time means integrating systems and devices, and engaging expert clinicians and administrators to participate in creating a well thought out care delivery plan. This planning has to be done regardless of the EHR.

Wairever Inc. is the only software company focused on designing tools to make EHR’s both more valuable to all stakeholders and quicker and easier to implement without changing the EHR. There is a correlation between EHR adoption and the volume of quality knowledge embedded within it. Without clinical knowledge embedded into the EHR’s, they won’t be very effective. It’s up to the clinical leadership to determine what goes in and how good the EHR can be. Of course all organizations are resource constrained and there is only so much money and people that can be allocated to get the EHR up and keep it running. Thus, getting more for your money is key, especially with EHR. It’s the difference between having an ROI or not, and whether or not adoption is achieved.

Getting to consensus is a major challenge and the source of much of the EHR implementation cost. Consensus on the clinical content is really about getting clinical content design details right—”what”, “when”, “how”, “who”. Then consensus on the EHR screens, the menus, the fields, the terminology, and the behavior must be just right. Plexina allows the clinical leadership to rapidly and systematically iterate through the potentially different clinical approaches and get to a realistic design without having to build it all. Plexina also addresses the “why”. The configuration team receives fully defined specs from the clinicians in a systematic and predictable manner, after the designs are approved. This is only one application of Plexina’s clinical knowledge automation. Plexina is also used for terminology standardization, quality assurance, downtime, and analytics.

About City of Hope 

City of Hope is a leading research, treatment and education center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Designated as a comprehensive cancer center, the highest honor bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, City of Hope's research and treatment protocols advance care throughout the nation. City of Hope is located in Duarte, Calif., just northeast of Los Angeles, and is ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" in cancer by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation and genetics. For more information, visit www.cityofhope.org

About Wairever Inc.

Wairever is a leading innovator in applied clinical intelligence and clinical knowledge automation. Founded in 2005, Wairever is pioneering numerous computing fields and applied computing for healthcare informatics, including NLP, rules engines, expert systems, knowledge management, business intelligence, semantic webs, and semantic querying. These innovations enable its flagship product, Plexina, to automate and support many of the clinical knowledge management challenges in healthcare, including acquisition, integration, standardization, information system deployment, maintenance, quality control, and analysis. For more information, visit www.wairever.com