From early in 2020, organizations around the world have been forced to quickly transition to new and remote ways of working in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowhere has this transition been more acute than in the healthcare and life science industry, where the effects of the pandemic were felt instantly. From clinical labs to pharmaceutical companies, healthcare and life sciences organizations are finding themselves front and center of the fight against this insidious virus.
At OpenText™, we recognize and commend the sacrifice that individuals and organizations in healthcare and life sciences are making as they mobilize to respond to COVID-19. We are all indebted to the global healthcare workers, emergency responders, and others who are working diligently to care for the sick, develop a vaccine, and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
I’d like to take this opportunity to share how some of our customers are working diligently in response to the current crisis, and how OpenText has been supporting their efforts.
Pharmaceutical industry
Many drug companies and research labs around the world are working to develop new treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, requiring a delicate balance between long-running clinical trials and the urgent need for a vaccine. Compounding these challenges has been the requirement to move employees to remote work as many countries have instituted quarantine guidelines and orders.
Montreal-based Pharmascience is a leading manufacturer of branded and generic pharmaceutical drugs, producing over 2,000 products and filling more than 45 million prescriptions a year in Canada alone. Faced with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pharmascience has turned to OpenText Content Suite to ensure its employees could safely and securely access the information they needed while working remotely.
“Over half of our employees are working remotely. We needed to ensure our workforce could work safely and securely from home while maintaining compliance and audit protocols,” said Denis Beauchemin, CIO, Pharmascience. “OpenText Content Suite ensures our employees have access to critical information while we prepare to support mass production of medications which may alter the fight against COVID-19.”
Clinical laboratories
A critical element in getting the world back to pre-pandemic normality is the ability for countries to test for infection at scale. Clinical labs are being asked to deliver faster diagnostic results to keep the “R” number as low as possible and to ensure high-quality patient care. Key to this is the ability to connect to multiple electronic medical records (EMRs) easily and securely.
Secure integration to electronic medical records can help to reduce reliance on paper and manual processes, eliminate errors, and ensure timely orders – all important outcomes in improving patient care and treatment. Enabling immediate care to one of our most vulnerable populations—those residing in long term care centers—can be critical to improving patient outcomes.
Pathos Clinical Solutions specializes in delivering customized diagnostic and testing solutions to physicians, hospitals and long term care facilities. Pathos has recently turned to OpenText to simplify lab and electronic medical record (EMR) integration with external healthcare providers.
“This connection with EMR-Link is critical to our mission to improve patient care. EMR-Link’s unified EMR integration and CPOE solution provide clean and complete orders and help deliver faster diagnostic results to the physicians and long term care facilities we serve,” said Weston Black, Co-Owner/Co-Founder at Pathos.
Healthcare practices
Small healthcare practices around the world are also facing more challenges than ever before. As the global pandemic has forced healthcare workers around the world into unexpected teleworking setups, healthcare practices have had to quickly find new ways of meeting patient needs while practicing social distancing.
All-City Health Care Services in the New York area transitioned to remote work setups due to the pandemic. Without their usual fax lifeline, All-City Health Care wouldn’t be able to coordinate care and billing. Their ability to maintain their high standards of patient care was at risk of being disrupted. The healthcare practice turned to OpenText to help support secure ways to transmit Personal Health Information (PHI) from any enabled workstation, MFP, or mobile device. OpenText™ XM Fax was the perfect solution to All-City Health Care’s problem, allowing staff to send and receive HIPAA-compliant fax messages from home or in the field with patients.
“I was back to sending faxes in just 48 hours, thanks to the quick response and deployment by CARR and OpenText XMedius,” said Kelly Ochoa, Administrator, All-City Health Care Services.
Our thanks
To the global healthcare workers, frontline staff, emergency responders, and all those working in the fight against COVID-19, thank you all for working so selflessly to keep us all safe and healthy.
