Case Study: Canterbury District Health Board achieves a South Island-wide EMR with Orion Health

Canterbury District Health Board saves 1.5 million days with Orion Health

Canterbury District Health Board (Canterbury DHB) faced the challenge of creating an integrated regional health system amid increasing demands, funding constraints, and the widespread destruction of paper records after the 2010-2011 earthquakes. The organization aimed to enable safer, more efficient care by developing a single, accessible electronic medical record (EMR) for the South Island, in line with New Zealand's national health goals. They partnered with vendor Orion Health to address this.

Orion Health implemented its clinical portal, clinical data repository, and Rhapsody Integration Engine to create the Health Connect South EMR. This solution provided a unified, web-based patient record accessible across hospitals and community care, improving information sharing and clinical decision-making. The results included enabling comprehensive information sharing impossible with paper, significantly speeding up data retrieval, and reducing the risk of patient harm. Measurably, the system saved an estimated 1.5 million days of waiting time for the community over three years and was expanded to multiple South Island DHBs.

Canterbury District Health Board