PERTH tech company Working Systems Solutions Ltd has strengthened its interest in the international health IT market by merging its health business into its recently acquired subsidiary Global Health Ltd.
PERTH tech company Working Systems Solutions Ltd has strengthened its interest in the international health IT market by merging its health business into its recently acquired subsidiary Global Health Ltd.
WSS acquired Global Health,
a Melbourne-based KPMG joint venture firm specialising in developing Internet-based clinical and consumer health software, in a share and cash deal. KPMG will become a shareholder in WSS.
Business News previously reported WSS had moved into the online education sector by partnering Uni-U and Notre Dame University in the development of a web-based International Master of Electronic Commerce course.
WSS chief executive officer John Wreford said the acquisition positioned Global Health as the leading provider of advanced health solutions and there were plans to market the product in Australia and internationally.
Global Health chief executive officer Dr David Campbell said the combined company would have a positive impact on improving the way patients were administered within the health system.
“We are concerned with health and wellness management, so our applications are focused at the point of care, whether in hospitals, community practice or the home, and the linkages between them,” Dr Campbell said.
“This means that the right information is available when and where required, delivering better health care to people anywhere, anytime.”
Global Health’s flagship product is MasterCare, a web-based solution that provides on-demand patient information to hospital staff and GPs. Dr Campbell said it brought together a lot of information that was scattered among differing systems and did away with the traditional reliance on paperwork.
He gave the example of patient discharge, a process that requires doctors to write or type patient details and then mail it to the GP. MasterCare digitises the process and allows the information to be automatically transmitted to the GP in the preferred format, whether encrypted email, fax or mail.
WSS clinical systems manager Dr Hugh Leslie said the health care industry had been slow to adopt new IT applications, and that MasterCare had the potential to transfer much of the time consuming paperwork to an online environment.
“The health care industry has lagged behind a lot of other industries in terms of technology and I think cost has been the major factor. These systems can be very expensive and hospitals don’t have this kind of money.” Dr Leslie said.
“To take a hospital and re-engineer the systems so all the IT fits together is an enormously expensive proposition and most places can’t attempt (it).
“What we think is very exciting with MasterCare is all the current technology they’ve got in the hospitals can stay there. MasterCare operates over the top of that and it extends the life span of the existing systems.”
MasterCare is integrated within a hospital’s existing systems via the unique e-switch application-to-application tool.
