Monash Health pilots FiveP’s role-based messaging app

Monash Health, one of Victoria’s largest public health services, is implementing a new messaging application on Microsoft Teams developed by IT services provider FiveP.

The role-based messaging solution called Baret is being tried out to over 600 medical registrars across five hospitals of the health service, according to Monash Health CMIO Dr Michael Franco.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Baret enables closed-loop communications between clinical and frontline workers. It lets users know who exactly to contact and allows them to interact immediately.

One of its key abilities is to provide parties with acknowledgement of message handover, ensuring that any open communications are transitioned to the new staff coming into their shifts. It also helps users refer to and prioritise messages easily.

Additionally, Beret offers auditability and traceability of all communications via an administrator dashboard, as well as EMR/PAS system integration.

Launched last year October, the messaging extension on Microsoft Teams was initially developed to support clinical communications at Austin Health.

WHY IT MATTERS

Monash Health has chosen to try out Baret because of its potential to improve clinical communication and streamline the work of its internal contact centre. “As Baret can route messages directly to the rostered-on clinician, we anticipate a drop in the volume of calls through our switch and faster sharing of time-critical information,” said Mark Gravell, Monash Health’s director of technology business services.

Its pilot is expected to “provide a consistent, streamlined, and timely clinical communication method, enabling our frontline workers to spend more time on direct patient care,” Dr Franco said.

THE LARGER TREND

Aged care provider Third Aged Health in New Zealand also faces the same communication difficulties during high staff turnover. Recently, it expanded its use of Celo Health’s internal clinical communications platform to include its clinicians and aged care residential partners. It first adopted the messaging app last year to ensure uninterrupted communication among staff while they attend to growing COVID-19 cases.

ON THE RECORD

“A hospital is an environment that has many different communication methods available, and that can contribute to a high level of variability. Our aim with Baret is to help rationalise and streamline the number of devices and communication methods in use while drastically improving the overall communications capability with tools such as secure clinical image sharing, and one-touch multi-disciplinary meetings for rapid response to patient scenarios,” FiveP Managing Director David Dennis said about their messaging solution.