Heron announces its new software product suite - COMPASS - a platform independent PAS

Media release: January 16, 2006, Heron Technology Corp., Markham, Ontario

Heron has entered into a business agreement to develop the next generation of the company's Patient Administration System (PAS) - COMPASS - a platform- independent PAS.

Heron has entered into a business agreement to develop the next generation of the company’s Patient Administration System – COMPASS. The Heron PAS is currently deployed in three developing countries, as well as in Canadian hospitals.

Mike King, is the developer of Providex, which is today operational on more than one million desktops worldwide, with the largest user deploying more than 250,000 desktops. Mr. King states that “Providex brings a low-cost and very comprehensive GUI approach to the desktop, which fits very well with the approach that Heron has taken in providing its PAS to developing countries.” Heron has mandated that the tools and approaches used to support the solution, must be sustainable technically, and financially, and has always adhered to approaches that minimize end-user cost-of-ownership, thereby ensuring the success of the country health IT sector going forward.

The multi-lingual COMPASS application software modules are the logical starting point for national computerization of the health sector. The PAS addresses the functional processing needs in such departments as Admitting, Inpatients, Outpatients, Accident & Emergency, Billing & Accounts Receivable, Health Records Abstracting, Insurance processing, and MOH Statistical Reporting. An important integrated module, which was developed for Jamaica, is Surveillance. In Jamaica the Injury Surveillance module has been in use since 1998, and the Surveillance system is capable of providing e-Surveillance on any Disease or health condition, in an accurate and timely fashion,

The Heron COMPASS development provides for an Internet capability where appropriate, using low-cost ‘thin-clients’ on the desktop with a server-centric architecture operating with any operating system, while Linux is recommended. The system is designed to be as low cost as possible, permitting the ‘developing’ countries to start into the very important matter of health sector computerization of their hospitals and clinics.

The Heron Surveillance/PAS software suite has gained the recognition of such key health sector overseers as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The CDC, in a major field study, involving twenty-seven health sector experts, in a 57-page report, observed that the Heron Surveillance/PAS “could be a model for other developing countries and for developed countries.” The CDC report noted that the system, as installed in the hospitals of Jamaica, “could be considered a success.”

In addition, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the WHO (World Health Organization), have over the past two years invited senior health executives from the Jamaica Ministry of Health to speak at health conferences around the world on the benefits derived from the computerization of the country’s health sector.