NEW ORLEANS, June 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Louisiana State University (LSU) Healthcare Network today announced it has been selected as a recipient of the Microsoft HealthVault Be Well Fund. Be Well Fund recipients were chosen from nearly 200 proposals and announced at the second annual Microsoft HealthVault Solutions Conference on June 10 in Bellevue, Wash.
LSU Healthcare Network, the multi-specialty physician practice comprised of more than 500 faculty members of the LSU Health Sciences Center and LSU School of Medicine, will use the Microsoft grant to implement a system enabling tens of thousands of New Orleans-area patients and their doctors to go online and download their active medications, medication history and allergies. In the event of another disaster like Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in August 2005, patients who are evacuated from the region without their medical records could log onto their Microsoft HealthVault account to access their medication information and ensure they receive appropriate short-term care. This vital medical information would then be available to the patient wherever treatment is provided, dramatically improving the quality of care and saving millions of dollars wasted on redundant care that might be necessary if their records were lost.
Participating patients need not have a LSU Healthcare Network physician but must have a Microsoft HealthVault account and their physicians must use free, web-based electronic prescribing, or "e-prescribing," technology from Allscripts to transfer information into their personal health records. LSU Healthcare Network, Microsoft and Allscripts hope that the program will establish a model that other cities threatened by natural disaster can implement to protect their citizens' health in an emergency.
"We are honored to be chosen as a recipient of the Be Well Fund to establish a model that cities across the United States can use to help mitigate the health impacts of natural disasters," said Frank Opelka, MD, Chief Executive Officer of LSU Health Network. "With an accurate personal health record populated with clinically relevant data derived from Allscripts ePrescribe and using an enabling technology like Microsoft HealthVault, patients can take their medical records with them wherever they go, no matter what potentially catastrophic conditions occur."
As the physician staff of the primary "safety net" clinics in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, LSU Health Network serves the neediest patients in Southeast Louisiana, the region hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. In a broad-ranging response to the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed over 250,000 of LSU Health Network's paper medical charts and displaced thousands of its patients and providers, LSU Health Network is deploying an Electronic Health Record from Allscripts in their own clinics across Southeast Louisiana. The physician group also is leading the deployment of free, web-based electronic prescribing -- Allscripts ePrescribe(TM) (formerly known as eRx NOW) -- to all physicians in the state as the regional sponsor of the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative(TM) (NEPSI(TM)), a coalition of technology and healthcare companies led by Allscripts and Dell, and co-sponsored by Microsoft and others.
"Microsoft is pleased to provide LSU Healthcare Network with seed funding to help ensure the people of New Orleans have online access to their vital health information whenever they need it, even in the event of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina," said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. "Innovative provider organizations like LSU and companies such as Allscripts are playing a significant role in delivering on the promise of connecting health information and bringing healthcare into the Internet Age."
Allscripts Chief Executive Officer Glen Tullman commented: "Our vision has always been to provide physicians with the right information at the right time, improving quality and reducing costs, while at the same time connecting physicians to all of the most important healthcare stakeholders. With Microsoft's new HealthVault technology, we can now realize that vision and connect physicians with the most important stakeholder in healthcare, the patient! We applaud the continued leadership of Dr. Frank Opelka and his team and are proud of our strong partnership with Microsoft."
Mr. Tullman and Dr. Opelka are the co-chairs of NEPSI (http://www.nationalerx.com/), whose other sponsors are Aetna, Cisco Systems, Fujitsu, Google -- the coalition's Search Sponsor -- Horizon BCBS of New Jersey, NaviMedix, Quest Diagnostics, Sprint Nextel, SureScripts, Wellpoint, and Wolters Kluwer Health. The coalition supports the delivery of Allscripts ePrescribe free of charge to any licensed prescriber in America.
The Microsoft HealthVault Be Well Fund is designed to stimulate not-for-profit research and development across a broad range of health disciplines that have the potential to significantly improve health and wellness outcomes.
About LSU Healthcare Network
The LSU Healthcare Network is a team of over 500 physicians and 130 employees that has provided leading edge health services throughout Southeast Louisiana since its founding in 1995. LSUHN's mission is to provide patients with the highest quality, comprehensive medical care through a compassionate, professional and patient-focused healthcare team that is committed to academic excellence. LSUHN faculty have distinguished themselves through research and innovation in Ophthalmology with LASIK surgery, Neurosciences, Level I Trauma Care, Oncology with the Neuroendocrine Tumor Program, and Pediatric Excellence. LSUHN's physicians were among the first to return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and they continue to play an integral role in rebuilding the healthcare delivery system in the region.
