Siemens (News - Alert) Healthcare has announced that it will expand the capabilities of its Soarian Clinicals “to include the ambulatory practice/physician office space” in 2013, and demonstrate its healthcare workflow solutions at HIMSS, according to a company press release.

The expansion will be part of a multi-year, multi-release project to be generally available in 2013, as part of Soarian Clinicals 3.4, according to the press release.

Hospitals moving from paper to electronic information systems often find that their workflows change, “causing delays, inefficient use of resources, and may be introducing a new kind of errors attributable to the complexity of human interaction with computer systems,” according to Jan Horsky, PhD, Lily Gutnik, and Vimla L. Patel, PhD, DSc at PubMedCentral.

The press release says that the addition of the Soarian Ambulatory module will result in an integrated single database clinical suite that is “expected to include enterprise ‘work-listing’ or task management,” according to the press release, to help physicians who must handle hundreds of patient-care tasks. The press release says that the new module will allow physicians to “receive time-sensitive notifications and view incoming results, send and receive clinically relevant communication, handle prescription eRenewals and manage documentation – all in one location,” and all to improve workflow.

Siemens has also announced the expansion of Soarian Clinicals’ ability to help emergency departments streamline their patient tracking and medication management workflows, part of version 3.3 of Soarian Clinicals, according to the press release. These capabilities are contained in Soarian ED, an integrated emergency department information system (EDIS) that allows clinicians in the patient care units to access ED documentation, including “pre-arrival, triage data, nursing assessment, and physician charting and assessments”  before the patient arrives. This information can then be shared across the hospital, according to the press release.

A story at healthcareit.com says that EDIS will play a key role in any hospital's ability to meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 Criteria.

And once the data is captured, it can be reused wherever it is needed in the hospital. The result? “An enterprise-wide view of the patient and wider adoption by clinicians across departments,” the press release reports.