One heart, one medical record

With its cardiology and cardiac surgery departments, the Schüchtermann Clinic is one of the largest interdisciplinary cardiac centers in Germany. An electronic patient record system was introduced in-house with the support of JiveX Healthcare Content Management. Other sites within the hospital network have now also integrated the archive - a real step forward in the move towards a virtually paperless workflow.

The IT department at the Schüchtermann-Clinic in Bad Rothenfelde  can look back on a busy few months. The implementation of a new hospital information system (HIS), which opened up new possibilities for digitization, certainly played the largest role here. In parallel with this major project, the hospital network expanded the scope of the JiveX Healthcare Content Management (HCM) – another step towards a virtually paperless workflow.

For the Schüchtermann Clinic, founded in 1973 and one of the largest and most renowned heart centers in Germany, this is the next milestone in its long collaboration with VISUS. This dates back to 2008, when JiveX Enterprise PACS replaced the two previous systems. “After that, we grew with JiveX,” recalls Bénedict Scholle, Deputy Head of IT & Medical Technology at the Schüchtermann Clinic. 

Upload portal for image data

JiveX PACS was implemented step by step at the Dörenberg Clinic in Bad Iburg and also at three medical care centers in southern Lower Saxony. All new modalities have since been consistently integrated into this landscape. Be it classic X-ray machines or C-arms, MRI or nuclear medicine equipment, or gamma cameras: every DICOM-compatible modality is connected to JiveX, and with regard to other facilities, Bénedict Scholle is “really glad that we have one PACS to cover all our needs and that our staff don't have to go chasing after images.”

VISUS also provides external support to the hospital network for the transmission of medical image data and findings. As a member of the connectMT medical tele-cooperation network  L, the Schüchtermann-Klinik receives over 8,000 examinations per year and cooperates with approximately 70 of the more than 700 partner institutions of connectMT. In addition, the clinic records around 50 uploads per month via the JiveX upload portal, which is prominently displayed on its website – a remarkable number considering that the typical clientele of cardiology and heart surgery stems from an age group for whom managing digitally stored data is still far from being routine. 

Pragmatic approaches to digitization

Pragmatic, viable approaches to digitization are therefore needed. Some five years ago, plans for an electronic patient record system began to take shape at the clinic. This involved implementing a suitable image and document archive. The decision to go with JiveX HCM was relatively easy, states Bénedict Scholle. "If you look at JiveX PACS and JiveX HCM from a technical perspective, the systems are similar in structure. As administrators, we therefore found it easy to embrace this approach.“ JiveX HCM went live in 2021, initially only at the Schüchtermann Clinic and with a deliberately small volume, ”we wanted to ensure that only truly relevant and audit-proof data were fed into the HCM." Additional subsystems were connected to the HCM step by step. Medical Controlling has also recently started working via the MD portal in the HCM and employs it to communicate with the medical services of health insurance companies. 

Embedded in the HIS

Once the decision to implement a new HIS had been made and it became clear that all the external sites within the network would also be given electronic patient records, this triggered the next milestone in the cooperation with VISUS: The extension of the HCM to include client separation, including a multi-instance installation at the Dörenberg Clinic as well as the Medicos Osnabrück outpatient rehabilitation and therapy center. The gateway for scan and CD import (SIG) integrated into JiveX facilitated the digitization impetus desired by the clinic. “We made it our mission to import as much medical data as possible into the HCM system as soon as patients were admitted, regardless of the source.”

The system went live on July 1, 2024, and according to Bénedict Scholle, the interim results are very encouraging.