Lakeridge Health, The Scarborough Hospital To Leverage Summit Express Connect For ConnectingGTA Ontario EMR Initiative

Leading Ontario hospitals to participate in ConnectingGTA

Braintree, Mass. -- Summit Healthcare, a leader in healthcare system integration, today announced that Lakeridge Health and The Scarborough Hospital of Ontario, Canada, will leverage their investment in the Summit Express Connect interface engine technology platform to support their integration with ConnectingGTA.

ConnectingGTA is the latest in a series of milestones to support data exchange across the six Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) in the Ontario Canadian region. ConnectingGTA will electronically link and integrate patient information from across the care continuum and make it available at the point of care to improve the patient and clinician experience for more than 700 service providers.  By connecting under a single "electronic roof," patient information will be able to move more easily from one service provider within the system to another. This, in turn, will eliminate many of the road bumps in the healthcare process, ensuring patients receive better, faster and more coordinated services from their providers.

Lakeridge Health of Oshawa and The Scarborough Hospital of Scarborough both have long-standing relationships with Summit Healthcare dating back more than ten years. By leveraging Summit Express Connect, as well as the integration expertise of Summit Healthcare, the service providers are able to better manage their interface landscape and establish an interconnectivity foundation as they look to connect on a wider scale.  ConnectingGTA will enable secure patient data exchange such as clinical reports, diagnostic images, drug information and laboratory tests to be shared across the 700 service providers.   The first phase will be live in mid 2013.

Summit Healthcare has also provided a range of professional services to aid the service providers' overarching integration initiatives. Summit Healthcare offers unsurpassed application and technical knowledge to ensure clients achieve the full potential of their IT investments and optimize their business processes. Throughout their relationships with Summit Healthcare, both Lakeridge Health and The Scarborough Hospital have successfully completed several integration projects and will continue to benefit from the support in the future.

"ConnectingGTA represents a major milestone for the Ontario healthcare community, and we are proud to team up with Summit Healthcare as The Scarborough Hospital makes this important investment and transition to further integrate systems," said Margaret McCormack, Manager of Clinical Health Informatics, The Scarborough Hospital. "Summit Express Connect provides an invaluable foundation for our integration initiative and will continue to be an important technology platform for us down the road."

"The decision to once again partner with Summit Healthcare to support our integration with the ConnectingGTA initiative was an easy one," said Ken McMillian, Director of IT, Lakeridge Health. "We have worked with Summit for years, and throughout the course of our relationship, their expertise has consistently played a crucial role in our IT strategy. We can always count on Summit to make IT integration a simple task and help us get to most out of our investments."

"Both Lakeridge Health and The Scarborough Hospital demonstrate how our clients are successfully taking advantage of our integration tools and expertise to deliver better services," said Ted Rossi, CEO, Summit Healthcare. "The Canadian healthcare industry is undergoing an important transition, and Summit Healthcare looks forward to continuing to work with our valued customers as they embrace their interoperability strategies moving forward."

About Summit Healthcare

Summit Healthcare is the choice of hospitals and providers who want to take full control of their healthcare systems integration and information management requirements. Since 1999, we have worked to provide the industry with the most flexible integration technology with complementary tailored services and solutions. Visit us at www.summit-healthcare.com.