Our Solutions

eMaternity, Matrix, ObstetrixTAS, Matis

Meridian has been involved in developing world class obstetric and maternity care systems for hospitals since 1992. Our software has been used to record over 1,000,000 births over this period. There are over 8,000 registered users in NSW of which about 1,200 are concurrent users at any point in time.

eMaternity and all the other versions of it enable the recording and decision support of the woman's journey from first presentation at a hospital through to community based care. The system is designed to be fully interoperable via HL7 and FHIR messaging with the patient administration system and other core systems as required, eg pathology. It is also integrated dynamically with the eMR in NSW.

A major differentiator of Meridian's products is that the customer can tailor data, reporting, and data collection rules. These requirements are recorded as [meta] data in a database and referred to as the maternity care 'Model'. This means that clinicians and other system users can ensure their specific needs are met. It also means that as best practice changes or research needs arise the 'model' can be changed to keep the system up to date. All these changes are managed with version control to ensure all data elements, covering comprehensive maternity/perinatal care, are presented in the context at the time the data was collected. This means information about the pregnancy and baby is future proofed.

Woman's Maternity Portal

The Woman's Maternity Portal is a mobile friendly web application that pregnant women can use to prepare for their initial antenatal visit. The purpose is to capture personal clinical information concerning their current and past pregnancies and provide education to help them better understand what lies ahead. This information will be available electronically to clinicians when she attends her first antenatal clinic.

The first comprehensive Antenatal History and Assessment appointment typically takes one to one and half hour to complete. A key goal of the Woman's Maternity Portal is to reduce this time by one third or an average 35 minutes. This reduction in clinician time suggests considerable cost savings. It will also allow clinicians to place greater focus on health promotion initiatives and services. For example in NSW with 55,000 births, a saving of more than $2 million is realistic.

Other benefits include the ability to offer the women targeted high quality advice, in their own language, based on information provided via the portal.

The application will also enable woman to provide better quality information. A maternity first visit generally collects 180 plus data items. Using the portal she can complete the questionnaire at her own pace referencing information from her family, GP records and medical history.

The Woman's Maternity Portal can be delivered via a state-wide service hub either hosted inhouse or using a software as a service (SaaS) implementation model. It will be accessible on all internet enabled mobile devices including smartphones.

The Mater Health Group in Brisbane have been able to realise these benefits through the introduction of their portal in 2018. An overwhelming majority of woman using the portal indicated a strong preference for this mode of collecting information. All English speaking woman who are planning to birth at the Mater are now required to complete the portal questionnaire prior to attending the first antenatal clinic.

The portal application can support inputs to eMaternity, Matrix, ObstetrixTas, Cerner Power Chart Maternity and other HL7 enabled systems.

Since 2000 Meridian has focussed solely on the development and support of health systems for the hospital sector and health administrations such as Justice Health.

Meridian's success is based on its knowledge and experience in the health IT sector and on the use of its Intelligent Data Management Engine (IDME). IDME is an industry strength health systems development tool.

The Intelligent Data Management Engine

The IDME is a new approach to developing clinical systems pioneered by Meridian Health Informatics and has proven to be remarkably successful in rapidly creating healthcare solutions. This technology distinguishes itself from traditional approaches to building computer systems by enabling clinical users to develop their applications rather than IT professionals.

IDME based solutions

In addition to the perinatal/maternity care solutions the Intelligent Data Management Engine (IDME) has been used to develop other health systems including:

• Synaptix a clinical recording and activity based funding calculation system for sub acute non acute patients (rehabilitation, palliative care, psycho geriatric care) and is also suited to ambulatory care.
• An alcohol and drug program support system for Justice Health (Connections)
• A Forensic Hospital system also for Justice Health

Conventional Health Systems

The most recent system built using conventional systems building tools is the Transfer of Care Reporting system which records the time it take for an ambulance patient to be transferred to emergency department staff care. This system is used in NSW across 180 emergency departments. This system matches ambulance despatch data with emergency department patient registrations.