Olympic Polyclinic Operates at Top Speed
with TrakCare

“Speed was of the essence and TrakCare delivered.” That’s how Thanassis Papamichos, Administrative Director of the Olympic Polyclinic, sums up how the TrakCare hospital information system (HIS) enabled best practices care delivery at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

A proven record of success, advanced functionality, and multi-language capabilities all played a part in the selection of TrakCare for the Olympic Polyclinic project. The sprint to success began with overcoming a major challenge. Conceptualised as an advanced healthcare facility that would include equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging machines (MRIs) and CT scanners that would be needed to treat Olympic athletes, the Polyclinic was constructed from the ground up on a very tight schedule. As a result, the volunteer technology team from IT healthcare specialist International Online (IOL), the TrakCare distributor in Greece, first received access to the medical centre just nine days before the doors were scheduled to open.

“This sort of project can take a year to prepare for,” says IOL Managing Director Paris Marinakis. “This was the first time information technology was used to manage an Olympic medical centre,” he says. “We had to install the system and import demographic and medical data from a broad range of external sources such as databases, spreadsheets, and test files, for literally thousands of athletes,” he continues. “We had just two days to train the first team of volunteers who staffed the clinic on opening day,” Marinakis continues.

“Based on the success of the Olympic Polyclinic, TrakCare was the right choice.”

--Thanassis Papamichos
Administrative Director
Olympic Polyclinic

Fast performance, real-time intelligence, rapid training

Running 24x7, TrakCare provided the Polyclinic healthcare staff with rapid access to vital health data and lab test results. The high performance and responsiveness of TrakCare provided rapid delivery of key information about physiotherapy, blood tests, and other major health services. The speed of the system supported fast response for patient needs and provided virtually real-time intelligence to key Olympic and government personnel, including Greece’s Minister of Health.

Over the course of the Olympics, TrakCare supported Polyclinic volunteers in handling well over 8,000 medical encounters for a patient population that included about 15,000 athletes and thousands of other games-related personnel. The emergency department remained open on a 24-hour basis and the number of daily encounters ranged between 200 and 450.

And, the speed with which new Polyclinic staffers – clinical volunteer teams turned over on a 10-day rotation – were able to learn and use TrakCare also contributed significantly to the overall success of the implementation. Users – some of whom had never before used a PC – were successfully working with the system after just one day of training. In fact, TrakCare’s flexibility, robustness, and ease of use were at such a high level that by the time the Paralympics began, the Polyclinic was able to run smoothly with about half the staff that had been needed during the main Olympics events.

Ongoing success, lasting value

After the close of the Athens Olympics, the Polyclinic was reopened as a state-of-the-art rehab centre for the local community. “We had the option of choosing any HIS we wished to support the community medical centre,” Papamichos says. “Based on the success of the Olympic Polyclinic, TrakCare was the right choice.”

“The Olympic Polyclinic was a high-profile, high-pressure scenario where the system absolutely could not go down…where it had to operate at high speed all day and every day…where we had to have 100 percent success,” Papamichos concludes. With TrakCare’s ability to drive speed-to-care, that’s exactly what happened.