The Heart Program at Miami Children’s Hospital became the first in the world to integrate its electronic medical record with the three North American registry databases for congenital heart disease.

Already known around the world for its IT leadership in the care of children with heart disease, the hospital's move promises a boost in patient care and safety.

The integration of the hospital’s Cerner EHR with registry databases for surgical patients, catheterization patients and cardiac ICU patients will enhance patient care and safety, family access, research to better understand the genomics of congenital heart disease and enable public reporting of outcomes.

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“The Heart Program has long been a pioneer in utilizing IT technology to enhance patient care, and physician and patient family access to care data,” Redmond P. Burke, MD, director of Cardiovascular Surgery for The Heart Program at Miami Children’s, said in a news release. This latest system integration is one more step in our commitment to best practices. Our surgical and interventional outcomes continue to be among the best in the nation and our focus on transparency ensures a sustained operational focus on this goal.”

The hospital accomplished the integration with the help of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based CardioAccess. CardioAccess created the International Clinical Outcomes Database, a relational, comprehensive database for both congenital and adult heart disease. The database with its integrated Web portal is configured to analyze and report on key metrics for particular specialty procedures.

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“CardioAccess is excited to be the first vendor to implement a streamlined approach to patient care and reporting,” said Owen White, CadioAccess senior project manager, in a statement. “It is critical to allow the healthcare providers to spend their time with the patients and less time documenting information that is already available in other clinical systems.

"Our mission is to provide a solution that improves the quality of care to the patients and allows for the clinicians to ensure the information they receive is timely and accurate," he added. "The adoption of an integrated solution and eagerness to improve workflow shows why The Heart Center at Miami Children’s Hospital is a center of excellence."