TheraDoc Uses Oracle to Help Improve Patient Care, Increase Hospital Safety
Online Knowledge Processing Leverages Oracle® Database To Improve Hospitals' Clinical Decisions
REDWOOD SHORES, CALIFORNIA, August 17, 2007 – TheraDoc® (www.theradoc.com) is a small company with a big mission - to save lives and enhance patient care by promoting improved clinical decision-making in hospitals across North America. By enabling the real-time collection, aggregation and analysis of data at every stage of a patient's journey through a hospital, the TheraDoc Expert System manages patient information, focuses clinicians' attention and provides guidance that improves patient care. This combination of real-time surveillance with real-time decision support requires a database that can cope with high transaction rates and simultaneous swift aggregation and analysis. This is why TheraDoc selected Oracle® Database as the repository at the heart of its offering.
TheraDoc's patented Expert System Platform® (ESP) collects data from a multitude of sources such as patient location (ADT - Admission, Discharge and Transfer), pharmacy, and laboratory orders and test results, utilizing Oracle's Database Advanced Queuing technology to process patient events. Then TheraDoc's selection of specialized Knowledge Modules use expert systems to process rules based on best-practice guidelines in several categories. These Knowledge Modules include the Infection Control Assistant®, Antibiotic Assistant®, Clinical Alerts AssistantTM, and the ADE Assistant® (Adverse Drug Events). Any system that deals with the very sensitive information required for real-time patient care needs a totally reliable place to store its data. For TheraDoc, Oracle Database was the logical choice.
"When we had to make a decision on the database in the year 2000, selecting Oracle was easy," said Jonathan Olson, Chief Technology Officer of TheraDoc. "No other database could offer the transaction processing capabilities combined with the simultaneous aggregation that our systems need. Reliability is obviously of paramount importance, and Oracle has a proven track record there also. Finally, there were specific functional areas, like Advanced Queuing, which were only available in Oracle."
Although it is a small company of about 60 employees, TheraDoc's impact is nationwide. The organizations selecting its system support patient care in over 39,000 beds and for millions of in- and out-patient visits in 152 hospitals in 29 states. Some of these healthcare facility sites include Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), Mayo Clinic-Florida, University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS), Nebraska's Great Plains Regional Medical Center, Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital and several hospitals in the VA system. The scale of healthcare organizations is also vast, ranging from 50 beds to 3,500 beds.
"The scalability of Oracle Database means that its performance is the least of our worries," continued Olson. "The database will scale smoothly from our smallest system, based on a single processor, to our largest, currently a Unix machine with 10 processors. We can support all of our hospitals with a single Database Administrator, using either the Oracle Database Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition, depending upon the hospital's needs."
TheraDoc has a non-negotiable adherence to medical informatics standards. This is the key to connectivity and interoperability with multiple internal and external information systems, as well as to accurate and immediate delivery of real-time patient information and best-practice knowledge to clinicians.
"Both TheraDoc and Oracle have the same commitment to standards-based software," said Olson. "This makes it much easier to keep our systems up to date as software development and the healthcare industry evolve. The capabilities within Oracle Database make it easier, faster and cheaper to develop our products, and Oracle's embedded license policy further enables us to make a truly cost-effective proposition to hospitals everywhere in North America."
TheraDoc is a member of OraclePartnerNetwork.
About the Oracle PartnerNetwork
Oracle PartnerNetwork is a global business network of more than 19,500 companies who deliver innovative software solutions based on Oracle software. Through access to Oracle's premier products, education, technical services, marketing and sales support, the Oracle PartnerNetwork program provides partners with the resources they need to be successful in today's global economy. Oracle partners are able to offer to their customers, leading-edge solutions backed by Oracle's position as the world's largest enterprise software company. http://oraclepartnernetwork.oracle.com
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
About TheraDoc, Inc.
TheraDoc is a clinical informatics company dedicated to improving the quality, efficiency and safety of patient care through enhanced clinical decision making. For more information, visit the TheraDoc Web site: www.theradoc.com
Trademarks
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. TheraDoc®, Expert System Platform®, Infection Control Assistant®, ADE Assistant®, Antibiotic Assistant®, and Clinical Alerts AssistantTM are registered trademarks of TheraDoc, Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
