New Zealand health software company Sense Medical and Canterbury District Health Board are celebrating over 1 million clinical notes created on the Cortex platform at the Christchurch Hospital campus. Cortex is a mobile-first application designed by clinicians for clinicians, to improve the quality of patient care and the efficiency of health care delivery teams by making the right information and tools available at the point of care, wherever that may be.   

The Cortex application provides bedside clinical note and care plan documentation as well as task management, electronic ordering of diagnostic tests, availability of results, and direct access to those results. Cortex is ideal for use by multi-disciplinary teams, enabling doctors, nurses, pharmacists and allied health clinicians to coordinate their patient’s care seamlessly.  

Stella Ward, Chief Digital Officer for Canterbury DHB and the West Coast DHB says this milestone of 1 million notes created is significant and confirms Cortex as the leading solution for mobile first hospital-based point of care clinical data capture in New Zealand. Clinicians across Canterbury DHB are creating notes at a rate of more than 2 million per year, representing almost 100 million clinical data points. 

Sense Medical Co-Founder, Dr Alistair Rumball-Smith, says the 1 million note milestone is a fantastic validation of the vision Sense Medical and Canterbury DHB teams have to create a clinically-led, highly innovative digital health solution that takes a significant stride towards going paperless. 

Reducing the amount of paper that passes from hand to hand removes one possible route for the spread of infections, like COVID-19 for example. Devices can be sanitised and one person per device protocols can be introduced if needed. Information in Cortex can also be viewed remotely, which gives the user access to all its functionality while enabling them to reduce exposure to infection risk in some scenarios. 

“The recently released Heather Simpson report places a large focus on the importance of digital data for the future of the NZ health system. We’re super excited about this milestone and our future roadmap which builds on the fantastic foundation we have at Canterbury DHB,” Alistair says. 

Cortex began its rollout across Canterbury DHB in mid-2019 in preparation for the move to the paper-lite Hagley Acute Services building. Over 1500 clinicians a day use Cortex as a mission-critical application for providing care across 27 clinical departments including General Medicine, General Surgery, Oncology and soon, Emergency. 

Stella Ward believes Cortex has more than achieved its initial goal of contributing to a paperless environment in Canterbury DHB hospitals and keeps the DHB on the course towards a world-class digital health system. 

“Cortex has enabled our frontline clinicians in ways we never envisaged when we started this journey. The efficiency gains, and improved quality of care that Cortex has enabled continues to be a game-changer. This one million note milestone reinforces the impact and importance of Cortex and we’re excited in anticipation of the upcoming enhancements our clinicians and the Sense Medical team have planned.” 

“Cortex is a fantastic example of how clinicians, technologists and developers can work together to create something truly useful for the entire NZ health system.”

 

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