EMIS and MDERA enhance agreement in Alberta

EMIS now to provide hosting services to University of Calgary Department of Medicine

Calgary, AB - 10 December 2009 – Medical Doctors Electronic Record Association of Southern Alberta (MDERA) and EMIS Inc., announced today that they have expanded the terms of their original agreement such that EMIS Inc. is now providing hosting services to MDERA, a medical specialty group, for its continued use of EMIS’ EMR, Patient Care System (PCS). While MDERA has been using EMIS’ PCS for more than two years, during this period it has been hosted in an Alberta Health Services’ (“AHS” - formerly Calgary Health Region) managed data centre. Under the terms of this newly expanded agreement, MDERA will now be fully supported by EMIS at its Alberta Data Centre.

“While the hosting services provided by AHS have been sufficient for us, it became increasingly clear that EMIS’ focus on hosting its EMR for physician use afforded us economies of scale, and other valuable capabilities, such as developing shared information system concepts with primary care physicians who also use EMIS. Furthermore, this will enhance our capacity to do research into better access for patients who need specialty services such as Rheumatology care” said Dr. Steven Edworthy, President of MDERA and practicing rheumatologist with the University of Calgary.

The EMIS Alberta-based data centre has been designed to support EMIS’ ever-growing customer base in Alberta, as well as to provide redundancy to data centres in other Provinces such as British Columbia where EMIS is expanding rapidly in terms of customers.

According to Garth McDonald, Director of Technical Operations for EMIS, “In building our data centres we focused on enhanced security, performance, and manageability, in many cases, beyond the requirements of programs such as Alberta’s and BC’s EMR programs. We are proud of the fact that our solution has been deemed by Alberta Health Services as having met or exceeded their requirements for proper design, which was a prerequisite to AHS’ supporting this move.”

Dr. Edworthy also commented “MDERA is committed to EMIS for the immediate future as it allows us to strengthen the foundation of structured, codified patient charts which will underpin the long-term Alberta healthcare IT landscape. With AHS’ support to continue using EMIS during these times of change, and EMIS’ investments in affordable ASP solutions for physicians, we feel this is a perfect time to make the move to the Alberta Data Centre. It also provides us the opportunity to take advantage of the advanced capabilities that led us to EMIS in the first place, such as allowing patients to securely access relevant health information, sharing of data between providers, and population health management which we are working to deploy in the coming months. We are particularly pleased to continue working with EMIS’ internationally recognized development team to consolidate our use of SNOMED CT as the nationally accepted coding standard. Furthermore, we are excited by their ongoing relationship with global software companies such as Microsoft.”

EMIS and MDERA, with the support of AHS, have completed the move and have it fully operational. Communication with users regarding the slightly modified processes in using the system, and anticipated performance improvements of the EMR are underway now.

About EMIS Inc.
EMIS Inc. is the Canadian subsidiary of The EMIS Group based in Leeds, United Kingdom. EMIS Inc. launched its Canadian operations in 2005, expanding on its success as the number one provider of EMR solutions in the UK and other countries. Since this time, EMIS Inc., headquartered in Edmonton, has become recognized in Canada as one of the pre-eminent solutions able to improve the health of Canadians and the daily activities of their providers through the use of a physician-centric, clinically based electronic medical record. EMIS supports its’ corporate principals of improving the health of individual patients, and the population as a whole through advanced knowledge garnered by empowering physicians to collaborate.

For More Information Please Contact:

Emis Inc.
Ron Hughes
Director, Sales & Marketing
(866) 443-3647
ron.hughes@emis.ca

MDERA
Dr. Stephen Edworthy
(403) 471-7742
sedworth@ucalgary.ca