Canberra hospitals hold dress rehearsals for new digital health record

The ACT digital health record will be live in just over two weeks with the final staff to be trained in the program.

ACT Health chief information officer Peter O'Halloran said more than 10,000 staff had been trained in the system with about 4000 left to go.

Mr O'Halloran said there will be the final testing and teams will run through additional simulations over the next two weeks. He said they would work to ensure every single piece of equipment was functional and all data had been successfully transferred.

"Every minute between now and go live is planned out," he said.

The digital health record, which will collate all paper and clinical records of patients in the ACT's public health system, will go live at 4am on Saturday, November 12. This time has been chosen to minimise disruption to patients.

Over the coming weeks there will be a series of simulations across Canberra's hospitals where staff will practise using the system.

"We think [simulations] are essential to actually ensuring that staff know how the system works and are comfortable and to ensure all of the workflows work they way we expect them to," Mr O'Halloran said.

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There was a simulation at the University of Canberra Hospital on Tuesday, where staff followed a typical patient's admission to the rehabilitation hospital.

Rehabilitation and aged care and community services executive director Jo Morris said the scenario followed a patient's journey from being discharged from Canberra Hospital and admitted to the university hospital for inpatient rehabilitation.

Some staff, including Dr Morris, acted as the patient in the simulation.

"To see through the patient's eye is really, really good," she said.

Dr Morris said the simulation took about an hour. She said staff wanted to ensure any issues could be identified prior to the system going live.

"We want to take our time and identify if there are any issues that we may need to iron out before we go live and make sure the staff feel well prepared," she said.

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