Cortex goes live at Timaru Hospital
Timaru Hospital went live on Cortex on Wednesday 12 August.
South Canterbury’s wards ran on paper notes until that morning. Doctors, nurses, and allied health staff now document at the bedside on mobile devices, test results arrive as they are reported, and tasks are assigned and tracked alongside the notes they belong to.
Anna Wheeler, Chief Nurse at Health New Zealand South Canterbury, led the governance group that took Cortex into Timaru.
“Moving from paper notes to a modern electronic record system is a significant step forward for patient care in South Canterbury,” she says. “It gives clinicians access to the information they need when they need it, helping them provide safer, more coordinated care.”
Six months of preparation sat behind that morning: more than 200 new devices, better Wi-Fi coverage through the hospital, and training for doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals across every service. The patient feeds were running and staff had access well before the date, so go-live itself was the day everyone started documenting in Cortex rather than on paper.
South Canterbury patients who need specialist care travel to Christchurch.
“Information is available immediately at the bedside and provides clinicians with a shared view of a patient’s care, wherever they are,” says Jon Herries, Digital Services Programme Director at Health New Zealand. “This is particularly valuable for patients receiving care across both Timaru and Christchurch, with records available to clinicians in both locations at the same time.”
“It’s been a privilege for Sense Medical, and for me personally, to work alongside the Health New Zealand and South Canterbury teams to onboard Timaru Hospital,” says Dr Christopher Rumball, Clinical Lead for Cortex. “The benefit comes from the teamwork and culture that grows around a modern, mobile tool built for, and with, our New Zealand hospitals, and one that clinicians genuinely look forward to using.”
Cortex now runs at Christchurch, Burwood, Ashburton, Te Nīkau, and Timaru hospitals, at Hawke’s Bay, with Nurse Maude in the community, and in private practice at Australis Medical in Christchurch.