Picis: turning hospital data into an asset

Picis has been providing information systems for hospitals in North America since the 1990s. When it decided to launch in Europe, it turned to Axicom for PR advice.

The Challenge

The challenge is considerable. The adoption of healthcare technology in North America is regarded by many to be twenty years in advance of the current level of adoption in Europe. Furthermore, Picis software provides the information backbone in the most acute areas of the hospital: namely the operating theatres, the intensive care unit, and all associated services.

The Strategy

The Axicom team felt the first stage of the Picis programme had to involve an element of education. The controversy that has dogged healthcare technology implementations in some parts of Europe means that many people have lost sight of the potential benefits technology can bring to the hospital environment. By automating so many aspects of data collection it can help to improve patient safety, and it helps clinicians to drive up performance by allowing easy retrieval of event history.

The Axicom team organised an extensive set of briefings with journalists and analysts across Europe, and worked with Picis to develop materials which explained how technology can help hard-pressed health services across Europe to improve efficiency and patient safety. The team worked with Picis customers in Europe to demonstrate proof of concept, and it raised significantly the company’s profile within specialist healthcare media.

The Results

As a result of the Axicom led campaign, Picis is regarded as the authority on how to deploy information technology to improve efficiency, clinical performance and patient safety in these life-critical areas of the hospital where the patients are the most vulnerable, the care process is the most complex and an increasing majority of hospital costs are concentrated.