June 2022 Edition
  • Increasing Bowel Cancer Screenings for Bowel Cancer Awareness Month
  • Data Governance - Guiding Principles
  • New Role - Permission Manager on MyPen Portal
  • Pen CS Awards 2022 - Nominations Now Open!
  • Pen CS Webinars
  • Data Governance
  • Increase Bowel Cancer Screening Participation Rate in your General Practice
  • Topbar for General Practices
  • Permission Manager for General Practices
  • Release Notes
Australia has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world, with 1 in 13 Australians developing the disease in their lifetime[1].

Almost 99% of bowel cancer cases can be treated successfully when detected early[1].

For Bowel Cancer Awareness Month (1st - 30th June) and Red Apple Day (15th June), the 'Stand Up to Cancer' booklet is available for General Practices and Aboriginal Medical Services.
This booklet supports your practice to use CAT Plus to better manage cancer, including Bowel Cancer. This includes the following Bowel cancer recipes:

  • Increasing Bowel Cancer Screening Participation Rates
  • Identifying under-screened populations for bowel cancer
  • Patients turning 50 in the next three months eligible for bowel cancer screening

Join us in our upcoming Bowel Cancer Screening webinar.
Webinar: Increase Bowel Cancer Screening Participation Rate in your General Practice
This webinar is focused on bowel cancer screening and reporting using CAT Plus. A range of activities will be shown to assist General Practice staff in efficient recall and general handling of bowel cancer screening.

Learning outcomes:
  • How to establish a baseline for your patient population for bowel cancer screening
  • Be familiar with the limitations and underlying data requirements of the cancer screening reports in CAT
  • Creating greater health care autonomy – Recall patients not up-to-date with their cancer screening status using Recall CAT and CAT Plus Prompts
  • Know where to get help and how to access resources to assist working with CAT Plus

Date: Thursday, 16th June
Time: 1:00 - 1:30pm AEST
Data Governance - Guiding Principles
Pen CS' Data Governance Guiding Principles were created to provide a guide and ethical framework for the company and our customers, as our needs evolve.

Pen CS in collaboration with Dr Kean-Seng Lim, Chief Medical Advisor and Dr Amandeep Hansra, developed the 'Pen CS Data Governance Framework - Guiding Principles'.

As a data technology company, Pen CS relies upon strong data governance to provide secure technology solutions that enable data owners, data stewards and data custodians to realise the benefits of their data.

The Pen CS Data Governance Framework was first developed in 2017 and has been updated periodically since. These ‘Guiding Principles’ are an extension of the Pen CS Data Governance Framework.

To find out more, join Dr Kean-Seng Lim as he walks through these Guiding Principles in an upcoming webinar for your Practice.
Permission Manager
Pen CS continues to be committed to excellence in data governance and to develop this technically into our software applications. Accordingly, Pen CS has created a new role in the MyPen user portal called Permission Manager. We have created this role so that your practice may nominate an individual to be responsible for managing Topbar Apps. 

This means that the nominated individual will have direct control over which Topbar Apps are activated in your General Practice or Aboriginal Medical Service and who (in your practice) may access them. 

The Permission Manager is responsible for the following functions:

  • The ability to manage Topbar Users within the Practice
  • The ability to enable or disable Topbar apps for Users across the whole Practice - ensuring that only consented apps are accessible for Users

To prepare for this change in the Topbar App Management, we encourage practices to set up the permission manager role. For support in this process download the User Guide and make a booking with our support team.
Webinar: Permission Manager Role for General Practices
This 30 minute session is designed to introduce the new role of Permission Manager in MyPen. The Permission Manager is a newly created role in Pen CS software and the role is responsible for how Topbar Apps are managed in your practice.

Date: Tuesday, 5th July
Time: 1:00pm - 1:30pm AEST
Pen CS Awards 2022 - Nominations open now!
Recognising data-driven quality improvement in General Practice and Aboriginal Medical Services, through the use of health informatics.

The 2022 Pen CS Awards provides an opportunity to recognise the continuous hard work and achievements of primary healthcare in Australia.

2022 winners will be announced at a Gala event in Sydney, where we will celebrate your achievements and acknowledge your Primary Health Networks and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations who contribute to driving quality improvement to improve community health outcomes.
Quality Improvement outcomes demonstrated from 2021 Pen CS Award Winners included:
  • GP management plans improved from 2.4% to 42.1% at Faulconbridge Health Centre.
  • Mandurah and Lakelands Doctors showed a 20.7% improvement in health assessments conducted for Indigenous patients.
  • Chatswood Medical and Dental Centre increased the number of health assessments conducted by 74% in 18 months.
Nominations are now open! Nominate yourself in one of the award categories.

For more information, the Pen CS Awards Nominations Package and the Pen CS Awards Flyer are available to assist you in nominating your practice.
Media Coverage
Pulse+IT: Dr Kean-Seng Lim joins Pen CS as Chief Medical Advisor
Pulse+IT features Dr Kean-Seng Lim's announcement as Pen CS' Chief Medical Advisor.

"Dr Lim will provide clinical governance and oversight of Pen CS, which markets software applications used for population health such as CAT Plus, a suite of health informatics technology solutions including PAT, CAT and Topbar clinical decision support."
Pen CS Learning: Free Webinars
Increase Bowel Cancer Screening Participation Rate in your General Practice
This webinar is focused on bowel cancer screening and reporting using CAT Plus. A range of activities will be shown to assist general practice staff in efficient recall and general handling of bowel cancer screening.

Learning outcomes:
  • How to establish a baseline for your patient population in regard to bowel cancer screening
  • Be familiar with the limitations and underlying data requirements of the cancer screening reports in CAT4
  • Creating greater health care autonomy – Recall patients not up-to-date with their cancer screening status using Recall CAT and CAT Plus Prompts.
  • Know where to get help and how to access resources to assist working with CAT Plus

Date: Thursday, 16th June
Time: 12:30-1:30pm AEST
Topbar for General Practices
Learn the basics of Topbar, our clinical decision support tool, and how it can be used to improve practice efficiency in general practice.

Learning outcomes:
  • Understand the functionality of Topbar in relation to clinical workflow and efficiency
  • Learn how Topbar can assist in improving data quality in your practice
  • Learn how Topbar can support revenue optimisation in your practice
  • Know how to access available resources to assist in working with Topbar
  • Understand Topbar data governance and data sharing

Date: Tuesday, 28th June
Time: 1:00pm - 1:30pm AEST
Permission Manager Role for General Practices
This 30 minute session is designed to introduce the new role of Permission Manager in MyPen. The Permission Manager is a newly created role in Pen CS software and the role is responsible for how Topbar Apps are managed in your practice.

Date: Tuesday, 5th July
Time: 1:00pm - 1:30pm AEST
More training?
Watch more webinars here.
View CAT recipes here.
Pen CS Release Updates
Topbar version 2.18.2 - June 2022
This Topbar release brings the following changes and fixes:
  • Improvement for Topbar to extract medication repeats in Best Practice and Medical Director.
  • Third-party app framework update to open Reminders window in Best Practice and Medical Director.
  • Added new diagnosis items for Back Pain, Peripheral Manifestion and Extra-articular manifestation for Medical Director.

CAT4.41
• Fixed an issue where ineligible patients were also appearing in HPV done list for Cervical Screening report
• Added new vaccination, Novavax, for COVID 19 immunisation
• Updated the below labels under the “Conditions” filter and in the “Disease” report:
  • From "Renal Impairment" to "Kidney Disease"
  • From "Acute Renal Failure" to "Acute Kidney Injury"
  • From "Chronic Renal Failure" to "Kidney Failure"
• Amendments to Heart Health Check Pilot – only for participating practices
• Added BP browser password option to enable database connectivity for Best Practice users