Telstra has finalised an investment in Australian electronic health record specialist IP Health, which provides medical practitioners with access to complete patient information on their smartphones and tablets. 

IP Health’s core product, Verdi, gives hospital clinicians and administrators a single view of patient information aggregated from multiple systems in a hospital. It extracts information in real time from a hospital’s existing paper or electronic databases, enabling information to appear to derive from a single source for simultaneous sharing.

Telstra Ventures Managing Director, Matthew Koertge, said the investment in IP Health aligned to Telstra’s strategy of developing new growth businesses and would build capability in Telstra’s Health portfolio.

“This investment fits with Telstra’s new health business unit by complementing our existing mobility and hosting solutions and expanding our offering to hospitals. IP Health will be an important asset as we continue to build capability in this area,” Mr Koertge said.

“There are more than 1300 hospitals in Australia, most using multiple systems. This new partnership will help IP Health accelerate its growth by combining our strong and trusted brand, our technology know-how and scale with an innovative software solution.

“IP Health’s Verdi software operates on top of existing systems, is modestly priced, quick to implement and compatible with all hospital systems. Patient information is available on mobile devices for clinicians to use anywhere which is important for specialists who work across multiple hospitals and practices,” he said.

IP Health CEO, Ashley Renner, said the Verdi solution enables doctors to access and update patient information and treatments, greatly reducing risks and improving response times.

“Many doctors are called upon out-of-hours to respond to patient needs. Verdi enables those doctors to have the patient’s full history at their fingertips.

“This means that if a doctor is called at home for an emergency they could monitor a live read of a patient’s ECG on their iPad, cross check their pathology results from a number of laboratories and make a recommendation to the nurse on call.

“Having this information on hand means that more accurate decisions can be made more quickly – and at the end of the day that saves lives,” Mr Renner said.

There are currently more than 5000 clinicians using Verdi at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and satellites in Victoria, and the Mater Hospital group in Queensland.

 Director, Division of Cancer Medicine at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Professor John Zalcberg, OAM, said that Verdi made life much easier and saved time for busy clinicians using the medical record to monitor their patients.

“Everything is available and trackable. We also know who has looked at what record when, which is important in terms of clinical trials and maintaining confidentiality and privacy.