The launch of the new electronic patient record (EPR) will transform Unity Health Toronto’s ability to roll out various artificial intelligence (AI) tools across all of our sites, bringing AI solutions to more teams and patients across our network.

“After EPR go-live, when everything is stable, our Data Science and Advanced Analytics Team will be able to scale the AI tools we’ve created across the Unity Health network,” says Director of Advanced Analytics Derek Beaton. “We’re all looking forward to this ability to quickly bring these tools to all of our patients and staff. It’s going to make things easier, and it’s going to impact a lot more lives.”

Prior to the launch of the EPR, St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Providence Healthcare were each using different electronic record systems, which were all at different levels of maturity. This made it difficult to bring AI tools developed at St. Michael’s to St. Joseph’s or Providence, Beaton said.

This story is part of a series on the launch of Unity Health’s new electronic patient record (EPR) system, powered by Epic Systems. These stories recognize the many people who made this project possible, and provide important information for Unity Health patients and caregivers as they plan to navigate the new system when it launches on November 30, 2024.

Now, with a singular EPR system, all of the sites will be collecting data in a consistent manner, which means that it will be far easier to bring an AI tool to another site, he said.

He gives the example of the Emergency Department Volume Forecasting Tool, an AI tool that uses past data to predict how many patients will visit the emergency room at any given time.

It was first developed and launched at St. Michael’s, and then much later brought to St. Joseph’s. But bringing it to the St. Joseph’s ED was a huge undertaking, Beaton said.

“We built that tool based on the systems and technology that existed at St. Michael’s. When we decided to bring it to St. Joseph’s we were starting from scratch – completely different technology,” he said. Further complicating the matter was that different data were collected at St. Joseph’s compared to St. Michael’s, and the data collected at both sites were often coded differently.

“We were duplicating our efforts to bring the same tool to two hospitals, just a few kilometres apart on Queen Street.”

Now, after the EPR launches, the hope is that more existing AI tools developed at St. Michael’s can be “turned on for free” at the other clinical sites, Beaton said. “It should be pretty straightforward to tap into the same data pipelines, tools and technology that we’ll all have with our EPR.”

Clinical Informatics Specialist Daniela Fenicky adds that the EPR will also make it more efficient to build future AI tools with both acute care sites in mind. “Moving forward, having data from one, unified system, it will be easier to create one tool that can be utilized for St. Michael’s and St. Joseph’s,” she said.

“There will still be some differences in the implementation and how the end-user will experience it, given that the hospitals aren’t exactly the same. But it will make it easier to create a tool that can translate to both hospitals.”

New possibilities in post-acute care

The new EPR will also likely bring more opportunities to create new solutions in post-acute areas of care, such as rehabilitation and complex continuing care, says Mark McPherson, director of electronic patient record analytics and reporting.

Historically, rehabilitation or complex continuing care settings have relied more heavily on paper records resulting in fewer AI-driven solutions across the sector. This could change in the future with a unified EPR system, said McPherson.

“It’s been difficult to bring AI tools to places like Providence, where there is traditionally less electronic data capture. But we will now have a lot more capabilities moving forward,” he said. “Post EPR go-live, we can start going in an entirely new direction and look to address problems that have been around in these areas for a while.”

By Marlene Leung

Photo by Eduardo Lima

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