Order up – PatientOrderSets wins award for best medical innovation

You’re feeling ill – say, with pneumonia, a heart attack, or a broken bone – and you head to the hospital for treatment. The attending physician checks you out, recognizes a set of symptoms, and offers a diagnosis… and if you’re in one of 170 Ontario hospitals, he or she might make a diagnosis using the product of MaRS client PatientOrderSets.com (formerly Open Source Order Sets).

Physician “order sets” are evidence-based checklists of potential treatments, created based on pre-established clinical guidelines. They allow doctors, nurses and support staff to quickly and easily identify appropriate treatments for hundreds of medical conditions that could present themselves in a care facility.

PatientOrderSets’ products and services – chiefly, software-based order sets – offer many advantages over the usual standard of care, including:

• Improving patient safety by maintaining evidence-based treatment options and best practices as top of mind for the prescribing physician
• Streamlining the diagnostic process and the collaboration potential among nurses, physicians and support staff, thereby saving time
• Decreasing transcription and medication errors by eliminating handwritten prescriptions and erroneous prescription choices
• Reducing healthcare costs, particularly by impacting the length of stay and hospital re-admission rates

By addressing issues such as these, PatientOrderSets recently won the “People’s Choice Award” for best medical innovation at the World Congress eHealth Innovation Conference, a summit held in Cambridge, Massachusetts that hosted clinical and IT leaders from across the continent.

The company has also just announced a strategic partnership with Accreditation Canada International (ACI), a world leader in healthcare quality improvement efforts, providing services worldwide to improve patient safety.

The award and partnership follow a $1 million joint investment from Canada Health Infoway and the Trillium Health Centre, which put PatientOrderSets in support of over 500 long-term care and continuing care beds in the Mississauga-Halton region; and a partnership with the Ontario Hospital Association that was established in 2010.

PatientOrderSets is an example of a unique Canadian company combining deep sector expertise with managerial experience and a differentiated business model. We are proud to support them in their growth!