National Health IT week – from September 23 through September 27 – is a nationwide action week focused on advancing change within the U.S. health care system. During this week, different stakeholders, including provider organizations; congressional, federal, and state agencies; and many others collaborate to demonstrate the power of information and technology to transform health in the U.S. and around the globe.
This year’s theme – Supporting Healthy Communities – focuses on promoting better health outcomes and health equity throughout our communities. The following points of engagement demonstrate how information and technology can transform health and create healthy communities:
- Advancing public and population health
- Modernizing the public health infrastructure
- Accelerating workforce development
- Expanding access to broadband and telehealth
- Addressing social determinants of health
The IT team at Cooper University Health Care plays an important role in both the patient and employee experience. The team recently enabled open scheduling for a number of providers through Cooper’s mobile myCooper app and website, allowing patients to book their own appointments quickly and efficiently. They are also exploring ways to expand Cooper’s offering of mobile applications for patients and employees, including enhancements to myCooper, an option for employees to access and manage Kronos from their phones, and the ability for nurses to use iPhones to document patient interactions, administer medications, and receive calls and critical alerts.
Cooper’s Epic software ensures that every patient has one complete record, so providers have a comprehensive view of that patient’s health, including how they’ve been cared for at other health care facilities. Additionally, Cooper IT has enabled two-way communication with the New Jersey state opioid prescriptions database, making it easier for clinicians to get a more holistic look at a patient’s treatment plan to help determine the best way to care for that patient.
Cooper’s IT team is made up of many different specialties. There are team members who manage the computing systems that run our core applications, such as Epic (the heart of our medical record systems), the network that delivers them to you (the veins), the desktops they run on (the eyes and ears), and the people who configure and support the applications that you use on a daily basis (the brain). Trainers, project managers, report writers, data architects, service delivery analysts, storage analysts, and leadership are all part of the large, complex delivery team of IT that ensures that these services are available to Cooper employees and the patients we serve.