Exan Software Introduces New axiUm Client: Fanshawe College
Introduction
London, Ontario, October 2021 – Exan announces the implementation and go-live of axiUm with its newest client, Fanshawe College. Based in London, Ontario, Fanshawe College trains dental hygienists and dental assistants. It will utilize axiUm in its clinics to obtain client health records, evaluate students, track their academic requirements, and run its dental programs business.
Exan recently spoke with Ms. Helen Symons, RDH, BSc, MAdEd, Professor, Dental Programs at Fanshawe about the college’s experience running their programs before axiUm, and their implementation, go-live experience, and how the programs are run now that they are facilitated by axiUm. Symons is one of Fanshawe’s designated axiUm “superusers” and has worked alongside the Exan team from the beginning of the process to the go-live period.
Summary
Fanshawe College is now using axiUm to manage their ten-month Dental Assisting program and three-year Dental Hygiene program. Before axiUm, they were paper-based until a couple of years ago when they began using a computer program with clinical documentation.
With axiUm, dental hygiene and dental assisting students at Fanshawe College will gain hands-on experience updating the electronic health record and completing charting and client care. Their training teaches them to become familiar with scheduling clients, taking a client’s health history, providing preventive client care, and generating invoices from treatment plans and codes. Dental hygiene and dental assisting students also learn the business management part of a dental practice.
Modernizing
Fanshawe College is proud to announce its brand-new clinic facility for all dental programs in London, Ontario. The programs previously operated their clinics out of Western University. The college spared no expense for the new dental facility with a mission to provide students with a technologically modern program. “We aimed to have the best-of-the-best in the clinic, which is why we chose axiUm,” noted Helen Symons. “Fanshawe College is driving our dental programs towards a technology-focused vision, with a fresh start in a new facility and a new software implementation.”
In the past, Fanshawe College utilized paper for all many of its systems. As well, for many years the Dental Hygiene Program used a clinical grading program called “Auto-Evaluator” from George Brown College. However, this program offered no integration capability with the client management system. With axiUm, having academic evaluations and the components that run the business side of the dental programs integrated with the software is the most advantageous option.
“We were delighted to be able to customize axiUm to support our clinical and administrative workflows. axiUm is typically used in dental schools for DDS and DMD programs., However, we tailored it specifically for the workflows we use in our dental hygiene and dental assisting programs” (Helen Symons, Professor, Dental Programs at Fanshawe College).
axiUm Experience
The Fanshawe College team had an overwhelmingly positive implementation experience with axiUm. “The team at Exan kept us on task and kept the project on track so that we were able to achieve our goals” (Symons, 2021).
Introducing dental hygiene and assisting students to axiUm has also gone very well, and the transition has been smooth. Students received training on axiUm for a couple of weeks, and their response was highly positive. They found axiUm to be quite intuitive, as have the faculty.
Over the summer, Exan’s team worked with Fanshawe College to tweak and finesse axiUm to their specific needs; this gave the students a more finished product and enhanced experience.
Improved Workflow
Fanshawe College’s mission for dental hygiene and dental assisting is to focus on human needs and the overall holistic care of their clients. While treatment codes are used in their program, they must notate clients’ holistic healthcare stories. With axiUm, they were able to customize the software to include codes and space to fit the client’s story.
“Our previous experience with notating client stories and inputting treatment codes in the other program never worked. Our general hygiene treatment plan, which is individualized written framework for care, could never be summarized by codes only. So, students ended up doing the care plan and holistic health notation on an electronic paper document that we would slide into the client file – it just never quite fit”(Symons, 2021).
Now, every clinical workflow process is facilitated by axiUm, from front desk to recall. Everything is on the axiUm system, from scheduling, initial contact, screening, planning and delivery of care and registering the first client.
Fanshawe also sees the value in axiUm for their students after they graduate from their programs. “Although students won’t see this specific program in their workplace after graduation, as it is an academic product, Fanshawe believes they are granting their students the ability to train on software with features that will mimic the software utilized by the private practices they will work in” (Symons, 2021).
About Fanshawe College
The Dental Hygiene and Dental Assisting program facilities have received a complete make-over and are returning the clinical portion of the program to Fanshawe’s London Campus. The new space features a new, state-of-the-art, public oral health clinic with a dental radiography suite that includes the latest digital radiography.
The Dental Hygiene program prepares students to practice as primary oral health care providers in various practice environments, including clinical, education, health promotion and research. The program focuses on preparing students to function within their scope of practice, collaboratively, with the client, the community and other health care providers.
The Dental Assisting (Levels I and II) program will prepare students to be entry-level practitioners working interdependently and collaboratively with health professionals in various practice settings. Graduates will assume multiple roles, including clinical, education, health promotion, business administration, and laboratory assistant, consistent with national and provincial standards.
About Exan
Exan is a proven leader in dental management software. With over 25 years of experience in the software marketplace, Exan has built a trusted reputation for academic dental software that is secure, practical, and robust.
axiUm is the leading academic dental software solution in North America. The secret to Exan’s success has been focusing on customer needs and collaborating with all stakeholders. axiUm allows dental education organizations to find patterns in new and existing methods to help drive behaviour for the best possible patient care experience.
For More Information
If you want information about how axiUm can support your academic dental program, please contact Exan’s Customer Success Manager, Mat Tzetzos, at mtzetzos@exansoftware.com.
