The Canadian Medical Association has written an article about PC Central, the ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet portal for Vancouver Coastal Health.
PC Central is a web-based hub for the 3500 physicians in the Lower Mainland, providing clinical decision support tools, local health resources, referral information, patient handouts and an extensive collection of links. A pilot project with physicians has been ongoing and they were recently surveyed to find out how they were using the application and how much time it was saving.
We worked with the VCH team throughout 2006 to roll out their medical implementation of ThoughtFarmer. Part of the feature set introduced during that time was our faceted browse interface, allowing physicians to find information across multiple content categories. We’re pleased to know that doctors and their office assistants are having an easier time finding information using the intranet. We hope to write a bit more about PC Central in the near future, but for now, you can read about it in this edition of the CMA’s magazine, Future Practice. You can also read the Canadian Healthcare Technology article, "PC Central web portal designed for Vancouver’s family physicians."