25 March 2021

Get to know our EMR Program Director, Trish Aldridge

Our Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Program officially kicked off last month with a team of almost 40 staff members embarking on a two to three year project to successfully implement an EMR across Northern Health.

The EMR will be a fully integrated digital patient record that will provide clinicians with a ‘single source of truth’ to support high quality care for our patients. The program will be a major clinical transformation project.

Over the next 18 months, staff across all our services will be involved in the design of the EMR.  The team recognises it may be challenging for our busy clinicians to be involved, so it will plan and work with staff to minimise disruption to services while they capture clinician’s knowledge.

Leading the charge is EMR Program Director, Trish Aldridge. Trish started her career as a paediatric nurse and moved into the digital health space early in her career as she could see that clinical information systems make such a difference to clinical care. Trish completed a Masters of Public Health and further studies in Digital Health. Trish has worked at Northern Health for the last four years preparing Northern Health for EMR, as well as being responsible for the Medical Grade Network upgrade.

Trish brings a wealth of experience in digital health and is excited to be at this point in the launch of the program.

“Prior to Northern Health, I have spent the last 15 years delivering clinical information systems. Some of these include Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, VCCC and Royal Melbourne,” Trish said.

After extensive work preparing for the commencement of the EMR Program, Trish is looking forward to working with her team and our Northern Health staff who are ready to embrace this change.  “I am so excited to be finally ready with my team to start working with our people across all sites to build their EMR, “ Trish added.

Trish explained that we will start the first of the design workshops (iterative) on April 12 and we have close to 100 sessions running over two weeks.

“Staff will be continuously involved from then on with the EMR team. I am proud of the enthusiasm of the staff and their willingness to be part of this exciting journey.  It will be challenging for us all at different times due to competing needs and priorities but the benefits for our patients will keep us on the path for success,” she concluded.