The recently-opened Victorian Heart Hospital, the first dedicated cardiac hospital in Australia, has also become the first pager-less hospital in the country. 

WHY IT MATTERS

VVH opted to adopt a role-based messaging platform provided by FiveP called Baret, noting its "unique advantages." 

For one, Baret reduces the time it takes for clinicians to find and send messages to the right person by routing messages directly to a role. It enables frontline healthcare workers to spend more time on direct patient care by improving the efficiency of sharing clinical communications within and between clinicians and reducing the risk of information being lost.

Franco also noted the app's ease of use. "I have had staff frequently talk to me about their desire to simplify and consolidate communication methods. So having something that is built into systems and tools that they already use, like Microsoft Teams, made a lot of sense." 

Moving forward, VVH is looking to consolidate communication policies. "The status quo isn’t fit for purpose now that we operate in a modern working environment," Franco explained.

THE LARGER TREND

Aside from VVH, Baret is also live across Monash Health's five major hospitals, where it was initially tried out last year in August. This first deployment was aimed at reducing the volume of internal switchboard calls. 

As of late, about 3,000 Monash Health employees are on board the Baret system and around 23,000 roles have been clocked on to shifts. "[W]e will expand our footprint across the rest of Monash Health in the coming months," Franco mentioned.

Meanwhile, FiveP just announced this week a strategic partnership with connected hospital interoperability platform Olinqua. According to a media release, they intend to exchange and invest in integration pathways between core features of their respective systems. 

Olinqua will be able to route alarm and notification sources into simplified endpoints such as Baret and Microsoft Teams, which then allows healthcare staff to receive real-time, role-based system-based, and location-based alerts, tasks, and messages with context and relevance to a clinical role being undertaken.