Overview
The Nova Scotia Hospital Information System (NShIS) provides health care professionals with quick, accurate, and appropriate access to patient's medical history information, which is important to providing patient care.
The provincial information system is a first step towards creating a provincial Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every Nova Scotian. The EHR will provide an integrated view of patient information, and will support the sharing of pertinent information among attending care providers within and between provincial hospitals more quickly than ever before.
The information system will benefit many Nova Scotians. In addition to providing health care professionals with up-to-date patient information, it will lessen the need for patients to repeat information over and over again, and can provide important medical history when a patient is not able to. For example, if someone from Yarmouth is in an accident in Cape Breton - medical staff involved in their treatment will have instant access to the information needed to treat them. The system will also reduce the duplication of tests. If a patient arrives at a hospital and a test was completed the day before at another site, the doctor or nurse will receive the results immediately without having to leave their office or pick up the phone.
As of March 31, 2006 Nova Scotia's hospital information system has now been implemented in 34 hospitals across eight district health authorities, making it easier for health-care workers to access information critical to their patients' care. To date, more than one million patients are on file. The system will eventually be linked to the systems used by Capital Health and the IWK Health Centre.
This NShIS (RealPlayer 6:14‡) Video was produced by the Cape Breton District Health Authority.