JOSHUA ALLAN
The 1510 West

The Lakeshore General Hospital launched a $790,000 digital transformation project, the regional health administrators announced last week.

“It’s great. (The hospital) had to come to the 21st century,” said Kirkland Mayor Michel Gibson, who attending the official kick-off hosted by the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, the regional board that administers health services in the West Island.

The project will see the hospital transition to using digital files, abandoning all paper record-keeping practices. This change will provide clinicians with faster access to patients’ medical records and eliminate the irritation of storing and sorting through extensive physical files. The change would facilitate the overall experience for patients, as they can now book appointments and check test results online, as well as have their prescriptions sent directly to pharmacies. Going digital will also fast track information sharing between medical departments, hospitals, clinics and doctors working in Family Medicine Groups.

The transition will also result in a “reduction in redundant tests and better coordination of care,” CIUSSS communications coordinator Hélène Bergeron-Gamache explained in an email.

“It was greatly urgent to do it,” Gibson added. “To be able to have a file where you can communicate from one building to the other automatically, it’s great.”

The project is being totally financed by a $790,000 donation from the Trottier Family Foundation. The Montreal-based charitable foundation has funded projects and initiatives at numerous hospitals across Quebec and Canada since its founding in 2000.

These changes will provide “faster and more streamlined services” that will “only serve to enhance the patient experience during their stay,” said Dan Gabay, president and CEO of the CIUSSS, in a statement.

The full transition is happening gradually, the statement continued, as the Lakeshore staff are undergoing training sessions to adapt to the digitized systems.

The transformation had already begun earlier this month with the hospital’s outpatient clinics transitioning to electronic medical records. This first phase is “already making a real difference in the lives of patients and health-care teams alike,” reads a July 22 Facebook post by the Lakeshore General Hospital Foundation.