06/07/06

VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System in Pennsylvania and VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System have selected clinical decision support software (CDSS) provided by TheraDoc Inc. The software’s real-time surveillance, alerting, and reporting capabilities will enhance infection control and prevention initiatives at both hospitals.

TheraDoc will implement its Expert System Platform® (ESP), Antibiotic Assistant® and Infection Control Assistant™ to enhance the quality of patient care provided at both hospitals. At VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, TheraDoc will collaborate with the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative (PRHI), a consortium that is working toward improving health care for patients and reducing health care costs.

"Investigating infections and identifying patterns is a time-consuming and lengthy process and thus, a major barrier to the adoption of efficient infection control procedures at the frontline of care," says Peter L. Perreiah, PRHI managing director. "TheraDoc software delivers relevant information to clinicians as they make patient-care decisions,   including the most current infection-control procedures. This helps clinicians shift from spending critical time locating data to collaborating about how to improve care."

TheraDoc’s expert CDSS will be integrated with the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) at the Pittsburgh and Los Angeles hospitals. The company’s exclusive inference engine will automate and accelerate the surveillance of electronic medical records and the identification of infections, while streamlining data collection processes for the clinicians. Concurrently, the CDSS will analyze and translate relevant patient data into meaningful, actionable information, combine it with evidence-based therapeutic recommendations, and deliver these to the point-of-care in real-time.