THE HALO EFFECT


It is easy to use, and overall it’s a vast improvement over AHLTA-T.


“The beauty of HALO is its simplicity. ”


Clark: If HALO is designed for situ- ations with low bandwidth, or when network communications go out, can you explain how that works; perhaps provide a scenario?


Ellis: Much like your internet and cable in your home, the time it takes to install your cable connection, and issues such as weather, technical issues, user error and low bandwidth, can all affect your service. Take all of these factors, then add in potential for disruption of the commu- nications network by our adversary, and you can see examples that could create a disconnected network environment that could last from a few minutes to a few days or longer.


Clark: You began HALO deployment in Afghanistan back in November. How did that go?


Ellis: The November deployment to Afghanistan exceeded our expectations. Forty-one hospital staff members (20 U.S., 21 NATO) received two hours of HALO training prior to the software’s go-live date. Most were able to document patient care electronically using HALO without further assistance from the HALO train- ing team.


—Maj. Paul Schunk, an emergency care physician in a post-deployment survey given Nov. 19, 2020, at U.S.-NATO hospital, Kabul, Afghanistan


Clark: Can providers communicate with each other through the application? Can you explain a bit about its capabilities?


Ellis: HALO allows a patient encounter to be open and accessible to other provid- ers who may have a requirement to also


provide documentation or co-sign. An example might be the physician who is documenting his or her notes while a medic is continuing to monitor and docu- ment vital signs. HALO provides an alert anytime more than one individual is docu- menting in the open patient encounter. Te legacy AHLTA-T software does not allow more than one individual to access the open encounter.


Clark: So how does HALO save the Army money?


Ellis: Because HALO is simple and easy to use, the savings are realized by reduc- ing the number of hours spent on trainers and training. Since HALO is so easy to support, it will allow Army IT personnel to spend more of their time supporting other applications. And the small size of


FIT FOR PURPOSE


Development of the HALO software started in 2017 on the lightweight, fit-for-purpose solution that provides medics and providers an easy-to-use, simple interface for capturing health data on patient encounters. (Photo by the author)


66


Army AL&T Magazine


Summer 2020


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