Alfresco Content Accelerator for Patient Records

With the recent launch of the Claims Content Accelerator and the Policy and Procedure Content Accelerator we would also like to highlight how the interface has been enhanced to provide for an efficient patient records experience. This post will outline some of the new enhancements to the Alfresco Content Accelerator that extend the functionality in a patient records scenario as well as how customers can augment an existing Electronic Health Records system like Epic, Cerner, or Salesforce Health Cloud with a modern content management experience.

The Alfresco Content Accelerator (formally TSG’s OpenContent Management Suite) has long been used for a variety of business cases like Claim Management, Policy & Procedure Management, Accounts Payable, Contract Management, Digital Archive, and many more use cases. We have recently seen an uptick in the number of hospitals and medical offices looking to do more with their content as they focus on a shift to more team-based care and patient-centric care. Types of content that we see in a hospital setting include:

• Medical Imaging
  • X-rays, CT scans, MRIs
  • Surgery Video
  • Telemedicine Recordings (huge uptick due to COVID-19 related responses)
  • Photos
• Supporting Content
  • Insurance Documents
  • Consent Forms
  • Reports
  • Correspondence

The following new features are now available in the Content Accelerator to enable clinicians even more functionality when working with patient records of all types:

• Timeline View for efficient navigation of patient history
• DICOM image viewing capabilities (Multi-frame and single frame)
• Improved Mobile experience from Tablets and Mobile Devices

Timeline View of Patient Record Content

The primary purpose of storing the medical records for an encounter is the efficient retrieval and navigation of the content. The newly added “Timeline Navigation” component of the Content Accelerator allows for a clinician to quickly familiarize themselves with the patient’s history with a sorted, filterable timeline.

DICOM Image Viewer/Player

We see large amounts of scanned PDFs, JPEGs, and TIF files from legacy systems that the Content Accelerator has already supported for years. We have also enabled video and audio viewing/bookmarking. The most recent addition to the ACA is support for DICOM formats that can now be displayed natively within the application. The DICOM file format is pervasive in the healthcare industry, but has traditionally only been available in PACS (picture archiving and communication system) – preventing users that aren’t on-site to access the sophisticated workstations needed to perform diagnostic viewing of medical images. We have updated the Content Accelerator to be able to view these files to widen the audience that has the ability to view these medical images in a non-diagnostic setting.

Mobile Experience

With the nature of healthcare changing as a response to COVID-19, we have also seen an increase in the demand for accessing content away from the traditional clinical setting to more fluid as to the devices being used to access medical content. A clinician on a tablet making rounds can be much more productive if they have access to a patient’s full library of records. The newly designed Content Accelerator interface for mobile/tablet users allows for an efficient experience on a touch enabled environment to be able to swipe through a patient’s documents.

Digital Mark-up & Correspondence Features

Other features within the Content Accelerator commonly used for patient records include:

• Annotations (markup a fluid chart with nurse comments)
• Redaction (preparing to send records outside of the controlled system)
• Correspondence (sending emails out of the system with attachments or links to provider/patient portals to retrieve medical records

Below is a demonstration of the extension of an EHR system to enable a streamlined experience for users working with clinical content.

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