Perth Children’s Hospital transitions to Digital Medical Record

After 18 months of careful consultation and preparation across the Child and Adolescent Health Service (CAHS), Perth Children's Hospital (PCH) is celebrating the launch of the Digital Medical Record (DMR) today, 22 November 2023. 

A digital medical record is a patient record that can be viewed on a computer screen, including a desktop, laptop or tablet. It replaces patients’ paper medical record. It includes a combination of:

• computer entered electronic forms (eForms)
• scanned copies of paper forms such as nursing observations, medication charts etc.
• reports published electronically from other WA health applications
• direct links to other WA Health applications

The DMR is the first step towards a full Electronic Medical Record.

Implementation of the Digital Medical Record will improve efficiency and ultimately the standard of patient care by:

• Ensuring clinicians have access to up-to-date patient information at the point of care to make safe and informed clinical decisions
• Helping clinicians communicate more effectively to provide safer care
• Securely sharing patient medical information with other treating clinicians in a timely manner for more coordinated and efficient care
• Increasing clinicians’ patient-facing time by improving efficiency
• Improving communication between patients, families, carers and clinicians
• Harmonising digital records across applications through new clinical application integrations including:
  • Mental Health documentation
  • Admission paperwork
  • Oncology and Haematology documentation
  • Surgical and anaesthetic consent documentation
  • Burns documentation
  • Operation Reports
  • Discharge Summaries in the state-wide system

All children’s medical records and personal information remain strictly confidential. Find out more about Your Child’s Medical record, and how our staff use and share information.

Mental Health records

For more information about how this change impacts mental health records, visit Your mental health record: a quick guide.