Equipment Information
CHARM - Oncology Information Management System
Kids Cancer Research Trust are proud to have funded the provision of a specially designed software package for the Women's & Children's Hospital that assists the treatment of cancer patients by coordinating, recording, and managing all aspects of the patient's care and treatment. The following paragraphs, written by a representative of the Oncology Department of the hospital, describe the function and benefits of the software in more detail.
CHARM has been specifically designed to support the work processes involved in the treatment of cancer patients through its scheduling, prescribing, and charting capabilities.
Cancer services rely primarily on manual systems in the care of its patients. As a service that utliises a multidisciplinary team approach to patient care, the implementation of an oncology information system is essential to facilitate robust communication between all staff involved in the patient's care. Such a system would decrease clinical risk in the cancer setting by ensuring that all staff have access to the latest information on a patient, including treatment protocol cahnges, and help to prevent errors such as wrong medication and wrong dose. It would also facilitate the scheduling of patient treatment and routine tests that are performed during the treatment cycle.
This system has been specifically tailored to handle the complex scheduling, medication management, and treatment protocols encountered in Cancer Services.
The implementation of an Oncology Information System will enhance the management of the cancer patients by
- Allowing information to be collected in a consistent manner on line
- Having information available to all relevant staff when they are seeing the patient
- Enhancing the ability to share information on the patient
- Reducing the risk of medication errors by negating the need for handwritten orders
- Assist in the standardisation of protocols and capture of reasons for deviation
- Introducing an online medication management
- Provide good scheduling facilities for patient management
- Introduce alerts to assist clinical staff in decision making
- Providing information required in the management of clinical trials
The Women's & Children's Haematology/Oncology unit are very grateful and appreciative of the financial assistance provided by Kids Cancer Research Trust in conjunction with Variety to support the ongoing licensing costs for the implementation of CHARM. This assistance will help us to utilise latest technology to provide up to date quality care for children receiving cancer care at the WCH.