Rio Olympics get plugged in with EHR for everyone at games

The Summer Games got a healthcare IT update for Rio, with a cloud-based electronic health record system for athletes, visitors and staff.

GE Healthcare, an official sponsor of the games, provided medical equipment to this year’s event along with a key piece of healthcare IT—its Centricity Practice Solution EHR and practice-management system. It was the first time all athletes at the Olympics had their health records managed on a common EHR.

In addition to its healthcare headquarters at the Olympic Village, Team USA had healthcare units equipped with EHRs at “high performance training centers all over the city of Rio,” said Bill Moreau, managing director of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s sports medicine division and chief medical officer of the U.S. team at the Rio Games.

With its network of cloud-based, interconnected EHRs, “We can have people all over collaborating, working together,” Moreau said. “I have an internal medicine specialist (Dr. Jason Blackham from Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City) an hour and a half from here, but literally we can consult with him through his EHR.”

The U.S. team used the Centricity EHR at the London 2012 Summer Games and 2014 Winter Olympics. After seeing the 2014 networked EHR setup, the International Olympic Committee sought the system for its healthcare operations in Rio.

With the Olympics over, about $2 million worth of the GE equipment is being donated to a Brazilian hospital.

Data from the EHR helped the U.S. women’s wrestling squad adjust its training to avoid injuries. The U.S.’ Haley Ruth Augello, in blue, competes against Japan’s Eri Tosaka during the women’s 48-kg. freestyle wrestling competition.