Novo Health Care Grid Technology Improves Patient Care

Inova Loudoun Hospital (ILH) has successfully implemented the Novo Healthcare Grid. ILH is one of the first organizations in the country to take advantage of this technology. The Novo Grid allows the secure exchange of information across the health care community, and has the ability to transform the future of health care.

This technology allows information to be moved in a standard format, securely, and quickly. Potential future applications for this technology could include such opportunities such as medication reconciliation, individual electronic medical records that could be shared among providers to ensure continuity and collaboration of care, gathering personal health information such as blood pressure or weight, and disease surveillance.

The first success in Loudoun was the connectivity to Dr. Tareq Abedin's Electronic Medical Record (EMR). Today all lab, radiology, and pathology results are being delivered electronically, immediately, and securely into his A-4 EMR. When Dr. Abedin steps into his office or even connects remotely to his practice EMR, the Inova Loudoun Hospital results are all awaiting his review inside his EMR. Because the data comes across as discrete data it is useable data, for example, he could trend lab values across a period of time.

Dr. Abedin explains that “it is wonderful to be spending more time with the patient and less time with the chart. For the office many of the mundane tasks have been eliminated allowing the staff to spend the time with people and clinical issues. No more prescription refills, filing or pulling charts, or posting charges.”

Additionally, he explains that his EMR is allowing for the patient to “have their prescriptions ready and waiting at the pharmacy, or having the results of the labs done yesterday, or the xray done 2 hours ago. The ability to directly contact me about medical questions on the web has also been a popular use of this technology.”

The Novo Grid will continue to be deployed in the upcoming weeks and months with other interested practices that have EMRs and are interested in receiving their results electronically.

If you are interested in learning more about this technology please contact:

• James Rohrbaugh at (703) 858-8047

• Nancy Mengel at (703) 779-5495.