The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa’s (HUS) new client and patient information system, Apotti, was implemented at Peijas Hospital in the early hours of Saturday 10 November 2018. It was a moment of excitement, as it was the first implementation of this wide-ranging and comprehensive information system.
A hospital with on-call capacity never sleeps, so the treatment of patients must continue normally through the night. This means laboratory results also have to travel smoothly between the wards and the laboratory, even when the patient information system was being replaced.
This was a big success: there were no interruptions in the use of the laboratory information system, Project Manager Jussi Järventö from Mylab explains.
Mylab experts were on call around the clock over the weekend when Apotti was being implemented. Before implementation, Mylab people had already spent thousands of working hours on the design and preparation of HUSLAB’s Apotti integration project. The project was launched at the beginning of 2017 and will continue at least until 2020.
The My+® laboratory information system is integrated with Apotti in two ways. Firstly, laboratory referrals and results travel smoothly between the two systems. Secondly, hospital care units have direct access through Apotti to the laboratory information using Mylab’s user interface application for care units.
From the laboratory’s perspective, the integration became a part of Mylab’s comprehensive information technological service, sums up Samuli Niiranen, CEO of Mylab.
A Finno-American collaboration
Mylab works in close collaboration with HUSLAB, HUS IT Management, Oy Apotti Ab and an American healthcare software company, Epic Systems. Epic will produce the core systems for Apotti.
Once we had found our common ground, the collaboration with our American colleagues has been professional and fruitful.
We have sought to highlight the needs and special characteristics of Finnish laboratory operations. I believe that this has been an eye-opening experience for everyone, one that will create new possibilities, explains Samuli Niiranen.
Apotti entered the testing phase about six months before the implementations took place. While the system was being tested with fictional customer and patient records that involved dozens of professional tasks, we also tested integrations with outside systems such as My+® and made the necessary improvements.
Lastly, before implementation, we stress-tested three of the most critical integrations in Apotti. The laboratory system was one of these.
In the stress test, 10,000 messages were sent all at once from one system to another. The Apotti and My+® integration withstood the stress well, so real-life traffic peaks should not pose a problem either, explains Jussi Järventö.
My+® blood center will also be integrated with Apotti
Apotti implementations will continue in phases during 2019-2020, which will mean a lot of work for Mylab as well.
Next, the system will be implemented in the city of Vantaa’s social services and primary health care services. After that, it is the turn of the remaining HUS services and Vantaa’s social welfare in October 2019.
Moreover, HUSLAB will implement Mylab’s new My+® blood center system, which will serve the hospitals’ blood transfer operations. This system will also be integrated with the Apotti system and made available to its users, according to Hannu Honkala, Vice President of Solutions at Mylab.
Towards the end of 2020, Apotti is to be implemented in Helsinki, Kauniainen, Kirkkonummi and Tuusula. Kerava has also decided to join Apotti.
At the Peijas Hospital in Vantaa, Apotti is used by about 1,500 social welfare and health care professionals. By the end of the implementation project, there will be 35,000 users.
Here at Mylab, we are proud that a software company from Tampere has had the chance to provide one important piece of the whole for an international software system supplier.
This is a significant reference to the Finnish field of health care information systems, Samuli Niiranen says with satisfaction.