UPMC Upgrades EMR via Oracle GoldenGate and Cerner's 724Access Software

UPMC has been a leader in adopting the latest of healthcare norms and in its endeavor to make its Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) more patient-centric and to raise the overall quality-of-care, it has created a new system that uses Oracle’s latest patient information systems and the best that Cerner’s Clinical Applications have to offer. Oracle, UPMC and Cerner have come together to ensure that clinicians are provided sustained access to their patient’s health records.

Oracle has been at the forefront of introducing end-to-end solutions in the US healthcare niche. In its endeavor to make medical practices further reduce their costs and still have better control and accessibility to patient records, Oracle has introduced a new healthcare-centric application. Oracle’s software is called GoldenGate and just like Cerner’s 724Access Deliver Business Continuity, this application is aimed at raising the overall quality of patient care and addresses patient concerns over the safety of their health records. These softwares are aimed at ensuring better, more comprehensive integration of clinical data within the EMR systems being used by a facility to ensure that physicians can easily access patient information at any time to ease the overall diagnostic process in the most secured environment.

Cerner’s 724Access software and Oracle GoldenGate will work together to ensure that clinicians have secured access to the latest updates in their patient’s database. This software upgrade will work towards reducing the diagnostic downtime considerably, making UPMC’s eRecord system one of the most efficient in the nation. This is a major development since UPMC is regarded as the biggest of players in the global healthcare niche with its financial portfolio of $9 billion and more than 50,000 employees. With its diverse healthcare network that comprises of more than 400 practitioners and 20 hospitals apart from numerous outpatient offices, this effort to make its EMR systems even more productive underlines the seriousness with which the biggest of healthcare brands have accepted the need to function in an EMR-based clinical setting.

UPMC was among the most aggressive adopters of EMR softwares, having already deployed 14 of Cerner’s Millennium applications in its clinical settings. This includes Cerner’s best offerings like PowerChart and CPOE that are regarded among the best digitalized formats for viewing and recording electronic patient data. Now, with the amalgamation of Oracle GoldenGate, real-time access to patient health information is going to be further expedited.

UPMC will use Oracle GoldenGate for replicating the patient data stored in its Cerner applications that already uses Oracle Database. This data will be shifted to a standby mode in Oracle Database with the promise of instantaneous switchover. The Oracle Database here is equipped with 17 Terabytes of data for supporting nearly 4,500 simultaneous users, i.e. UPMC clinicians, along with nearly 850,000 data interactions, per day. Even during periods of data migration or software upgrades, UPMC will be ensured zero-downtime to patient-data access and the same applies during phases of data recovery due to natural disasters.

Oracle GoldenGate is targeted at patient data acquisition across distanced clinical locations, uniform integration of patient information and timely distribution of the same to clinicians. Further, this technological upgrade is not expected to dent UPMC’s pockets with this software upgrade promising a low-impact and cost-effective solution. In combination with Cerner, Oracle GoldenGate will ensure that transactional integrity is maintained with minimal overhead costs.