Digitizing ECGs

The Deventer hospital

Optimizes Cardiac Workflow

The Deventer hospital is a general mid-sized hospital in the town of Deventer in the east of The Netherlands. In 1985 the St. Geertruiden Hospital and the St. Jozef Hospital merged to form ‘Deventer Ziekenhuis’. The hospital aims to be a paperless environment by 2007 when it will move into a new building. Part of this project is the renewal of the cardiology workflow.

History and local healthcare

Deventer, with some 95,000 inhabitants, is a historic town known as one of the Hansa towns. Since the 8th century people settled in this region because of its location next to the IJssel River. Nowadays Deventer is still a favored residence because of its location close to the main roads. Public healthcare is organized in a two-step model in The Netherlands. The majority of the patients will only visit a medical specialist in the hospital after their general practitioner (GP) has referred them. For that reason, the Deventer hospital is dependent on good relations with the GPs in Deventer and the surrounding villages. The hospital has invested in an ICT infrastructure covering GP offices as well. Family doctors are able to connect to the hospital network to consult laboratory results and diagnostic images.


Looking for an ECG management system

Historically, the Deventer Ziekenhuis stored the patient ECGs in paper files. The hospital is working on an electronic medical record (EMR) for all patients, which means that all patient data will be digitized. “We decided to look for an ECG data management system when we had already implemented a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) in the hospital,” says Dick Loman, Project Leader for the hospital’s Cardiology ICT projects. This decision was made for two reasons. On the one hand the hospital was looking to optimize the workflow for cardiologists. As the EMR was rolled out in the hospital there was a need for one integrated desktop; the medical specialist should have all relevant patient data available in one system without switching from one system to another. The second reason was the need to offer the GPs the ability to send in ECGs through the network for consultation. “This service has the advantage of bringing new cardiology patients to our hospital,” Mr Loman adds. Eighteen months ago the hospital started a market research for the new cardiology infrastructure. The main requirements were seamless integration with the existing ICT system, ease of use and support for order communication. The total system should be able both to acquire resting, stress and Holter ECGs and to store them. The Deventer hospital looked at three vendors and after a thorough comparison chose GE’s MUSE® Cardiology Information System as its new ECG management system.


Wireless support for cardiac workflow

“The main reason for choosing GE Healthcare was their ability to support our cardiac workfl ow and the wireless capabilities of the GE Marquette® system. The MAC 5000 ECG System is a dedicated, solid ECG machine which is a perfect solution for ECG acquisition,” Mr Loman describes. Cardiologists will be able to receive a patient’s ECG on their PC no matter whether this ECG is made in the hospital or in a GP’s office outside the hospital. This identical ECG acquisition enables the medical specialists to compare the ECGs over time in the MUSE Cardiology Information System. The MUSE system is suited for desktop integration with the hospital’s EMR. The implementation of the system includes a MUSE CV® Cardiology Information System for reviewing the ECGs. For ECG acquisition inside the hospital, the wireless MAC® 5000 ECG System is used for resting ECG. For stress ECG Deventer hospital uses the CASE Performance and the MARS Ambulatory ECG System together with the SEER Light Holter Recorders. CardioSoft® resting ECG and exercise stress testing will be installed on the PCs in the GP offices outside the hospital. Those ECGs will be sent twice a day right into MUSE through the network. “With this new infrastructure in our department we will be able to meet the hospital’s target of a paperless environment before moving into the new building. At the same time we are taking a huge step forward by offering more than 20 local GPs a digital ECG facility,” Mr Loman concludes.