Mercy Health consolidates messaging into Teams-based platform

Victoria-based Mercy Health is piloting a Microsoft Teams-based clinical messaging platform that consolidates multiple communication channels.

Named Baret, the platform provides role-based messaging and clinical rostering with the aim of reducing friction as staff “hand over critical information to each other”.

Launched at Werribee Mercy Hospital and Mercy Hospital for Women, the platform integrates with electronic medical records, nurse call, duress, alarms, patient administration systems, picture archiving and communication systems.

Mercy staff will also have access to information about individuals and their roles in one database.

“Hospitals are the most complex organisations on the planet,” Werribee Mercy Hospital's director of medical services Dr Oliver Daly said.

“There are so many different teams doing so many different things in a diverse array of environments.”

Dr Daly added that “duties are attached to the role, not the person”, hence the need for role-based segmentation.

“It means that when a health team member finishes their shift, they don’t have a personal to-do list that is left over,” he added. “They can easily hand over what they need to the next person.”

In order to remain compliant with handling sensitive patient data, all user activities are audited to enable detection of inappropriate use, Baret CTO Jane Prowse told iTnews.

Post-deployment, Dr Daly said he hoped role-based communication would become deeply embedded into clinical workflows, “supported by underlying interoperability with other systems”.

“It’s almost about simplifying and unthinking processes,” he added.