Humber River Health
Revolutionizing Healthcare - Cultivating Innovation

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ospitals and health systems must do more than just provide care to patients—they need to innovate and adapt to meet changing demands. With an ever-changing landscape and resources stretched thin, they have a bigger role in untangling the complexities of care and promoting community health. Success lies in their ability to embrace innovation to promote optimal outcomes.

Humber River Health (Humber), one of Canada’s largest regional acute care hospitals, is taking charge by working together with its community to deliver innovative, safe, and equitable healthcare. The first fully digital hospital in North America, it harnesses the custom combination of technologies and clinical expertise to serve over 850,000 individuals in the northwest greater Toronto area.

Humber’s services include Cardiology, Mental Health, Maternal and Child, Cancer Care and Medical Imaging, among many others. Specifically, it is an ideal choice for referring physicians within the community for superior medical imaging services that include CT, MRI, ultrasounds, x-ray, nuclear medicine, as well as diagnostic and interventional radiology. The quick turnaround time and high-quality reports associated with its services give Humber an edge over the competition.

Central to the department’s excellence is a suite of innovative software solutions that simplify tasks previously performed by administrative clerical support members and imaging technologists, which helps orchestrate seamless patient care. Humber’s proprietary scheduling software, developed by its team of in-house radiologists and experts, optimizes radiologist schedules, technologist assignments, nurse rotations, and associated on-call assignments. The solution can reduce administrative workload, facilitate transparent and easy communication, and allow employees to prioritize patient care. This enhances operational efficiencies and addresses common issues like long wait times.

Humber’s focus on innovation extends to their Breast Health Centre’s bone mineral density reporting software that completely automates analysis and reporting. Developed in-house, the software does the heavy lifting, sparing radiologists from manual data entry during reporting processes. It automatically generates reports, with the radiologist reviewing the outcome as a quality control check to ensure report accuracy. Many radiologists appreciate this groundbreaking software for its quick turnaround time and reliability.

Staying true to this mission, Humber goes the extra mile, partnering with like-minded organizations to accelerate the innovation journey. One example is its requisition software, built in collaboration with Novari’s Medical Imaging Requisition Management™ (MIRM) application to digitize faxed Medical Imaging requisitions. It eliminates paper chasing and filings, providing radiologists with access to protocols and prioritizes requests present onsite at the Hospital or from home. Humber has also joined hands with Kalo Medical and Canon Medical to develop synoptic reporting, an electronic reporting of the preliminary ultrasound. This allows for standardization of data acquisition and data transfer from technologist’s ultrasound acquisition and to the reporting process for radiologists.

Patients and physicians can view, download, and share medical imaging reports via a portal, exclusively built with technical assistance from PocketHealth. The commitment to efficiency is further supported by its online Meditech portal, enabling a patient to receive notification that their imaging reports are ready to review.

With its x-ray program, a partnership with GE Healthcare, Humber developed multiple intuitive and efficient AI tools, like the X-ray Quality App (XQA), Pneumothorax App, and Endotracheal Tube (ETT) App. The X-ray Quality App (XQA) provides seamless data transfer of repeated or rejected images, facilitating modality monitoring and a technologist-driven improvement program. The Pneumothorax App for chest x-rays supports clinical teams by highlighting potential pockets of air trapped inside the lungs. It enables more timely notification to technologists and radiologists so that patients can receive care swiftly. The Endotracheal Tube App for chest x-rays provides clinicians at the bedside with a highly reliable image overlay of ETT placement. This helps ensure the lifesaving tube insertion is in the right place for patients.

The collaborative efforts of Humber’s tech-savvy healthcare professionals complement the institution’s innovative excellence but also play a pivotal role in ensuring safe and compassionate care delivery while contributing to ongoing product development. This synergy allows Humber to tailor solutions and services that meet the unique needs of both patients and physicians. Furthermore, Humber’s Technologist Quality Control Program underscores its dedication to quality improvement, enabling the identification and resolution of potential issues through structured feedback mechanisms.

For example, the development of Prostate MRI services with rapid turnaround times and reports exemplifies Humber’s responsiveness to physician requests, enhancing efficiency and patient care.

Through its unwavering commitment to innovation and improvement, Humber is not only shaping the present but also laying the groundwork for a future where healthcare is more efficient, inclusive, and community focused. This track record of constant innovation reaffirms Humber’s position as a leader in the healthcare industry, dedicated to advancing the well-being of individuals and communities.