FiveP, a Melbourne-headquartered IT services company, has launched a role-based messaging solution that it initially developed to support clinical communications at Austin Health.  

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Developed with input from Austin Health, Baret is a role-based messaging solution that is built inside Microsoft Teams. The idea to create the app germinated from the deployment of Teams at Austin Health early last year because of the pandemic, and the need for office staff working remotely to communicate with clinical staff attending to COVID-19 wards.

As FiveP worked with Austin Health for this deployment and noticed some of the clinical use cases, they developed a prototype to demonstrate how role-based communications could be done on Teams.

The solution also offers EMR/PAS integration.

WHY IT MATTERS

According to a press release, the solution solves one of the "most common communications challenges relating to patient care in knowing who is available to be contacted for information and assistance and being able to reach them in time-sensitive situations".

"We have different individuals rotating through the same clinical role within a 24-hour period. It can be challenging and time consuming to find the person who is performing the rotational clinical role that you need to speak to at a given time," Nicole Hosking, operations director of Radiology and MIT at Austin Health said.

She also mentioned that it can be time-consuming to hand over all existing clinical communications at each shift change.

THE LARGER TREND

In the United States, Boston Children’s Hospital faced similar challenges with finding the right staff at the right time when it came to patient care. The hospital leveraged Cerner’s CareAware Connect tool, providing clinicians with a role-based communications system and allowing team members to claim roles that allowed for efficient communication with the right person.

ON THE RECORD

"Teams is already our embedded corporate communication platform," said Alan Pritchard, director of EMR and ICT Services at Austin Health. "Everybody's using it and we're already licensed for all users. The idea that we could solve another business problem with this same technology that we already have was very appealing."

"After being embedded with us for a year and a half, FiveP completely understood the problem, because they’d lived and breathed the Modern Workplace transition throughout the hospital and got to know a lot of people through that process. When they came to us and said, 'We think we can solve this problem. Would you like to work on this with us?', the obvious answer for me was ‘Yes’," he added.