National health care industry group The Center for Medical Interoperability has announced its board of directors, which includes five big-time Nashville health care leaders.

The local quintet consists of: Dr. Jeffrey Balser, vice chancellor of health affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Bill Carpenter, CEO of LifePoint Hospitals; Milton Johnson, CEO of HCA Holdings; Michael Schatzlein, CEO of Saint Thomas Health on behalf of Ascension Health; and Wayne Smith, CEO of Community Health Systems.

The Center for Medical Interoperability’s goal is to spearhead integration of medical technologies. The organization will develop a research and development lab to build standardized “plug-and-play” solutions for electronic medical records.

“It is vital that all forms of health care technology, including medical devices and electronic health records, be able to seamlessly exchange information so that the quality and safety of care can be improved and costs can be reduced,” Dr. Michael Johns, board chairman, said in a release.

The board of directors also includes representatives from Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, the Robert Wood Johnson Health System, Cedars-Sinai Health System, Hennepin Health System, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, West Health Institute, West Health and Scripps Health.

Via Nashville Post

Several of Nashville’s best-known health care leaders will help lead an effort to improve interoperability in medical technology systems.
Milton Johnson, chairman and CEO of HCA Holdings Inc.; Wayne Smith, president and CEO of Community Health Systems; William Carpenter III, chairman and CEO of LifePoint Hospitals; Dr. Jeffrey Balser, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; and Dr. Michael Schatzlein, CEO of Saint Thomas Health and a market leader for St. Louis-based Ascension Health, have been named to the board of directors of the Center for Medical Interoperability. They’re part of a 14-member board which includes representatives from other leading medical systems.

Backed by $10 million in funding from the Gary and Mary West Foundation, the center will use a research and development lab and the experience of its members to develop solutions to the problem of non-interoperability, which prevents the various new electronic medical records and other technologies from working together, according to a news release.

“It is vital that all forms of health care technology, including medical devices and electronic health records, be able to seamlessly exchange information so that the quality and safety of care can be improved and costs can be reduced,” said Dr. Michael M.E. Johns, founding board chairman of the Center for Interoperability.

Via Nashville Business Journal

The Center for Medical Interoperability, a nonprofit organization focused on accelerating the seamless exchange of health information, has announced its board of directors.

The center was founded in 2013 using $10 million in funding with the Gary and Mary West Foundation and support from the Gary and Mary West Health Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization aimed at lowering the costs of healthcare while improving its quality.

The Center for Medical Interoperability in particular aims to create a platform to achieve a “plug-and-play interoperability,” meaning the ability of two or more systems to seamlessly share and use information.

“The current lack of plug-and-play interoperability between medical devices, applications, enterprise systems and EHRs hinders physicians from quickly and easily being able to access information that aids in making the best decisions for patients,” said Michael Johns, MD, founding chairman of the center’s board of directors.

Here are the newly announced board members of the Center for Medical Interoperability.

• Michael M.E. Johns, MD: Founding chairman
• Jeffrey Balser, MD, PhD: Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Nashville, Tenn.)
• William Carpenter III: Chairman and CEO, LifePoint Hospitals (Brentwood, Tenn.)
• Dean Harrison: President and CEO, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare (Chicago)
• Milton Johnson: Chairman and CEO, Hospital Corporation of America (Nashville, Tenn.)
• Stephen Jones: President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Robert Wood Johnson Health System (New Brunswick, N.J.)
• Thomas Priselac: President and CEO, Cedars-Sinai Health System (Los Angeles)
• Jon Pryor, MD: CEO, Hennepin Healthcare System (Minneapolis)
• Paul Rothman, MD: CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Dean, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore)
• Michael Schatzlein, MD: Market leader of Indiana and Tennessee Ministries, Ascension Health (St. Louis)
• Joseph Smith, MD, PhD: CMO and chief science officer, West Health Institute (La Jolla, Calif.)
• Wayne Smith: Chairman, president and CEO: Community Health Systems (Franklin, Tenn.)
• Nicholas Valeriani: CEO, West Health (San Diego)
• Chris Van Gorder: President and CEO, Scripps Health (San Diego)

Via Becker’s Hospital Review

Center’s goal is to spearhead creation of plug-and-play interoperability platform for seamless exchange of patient information

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (April 9, 2015) – The Center for Medical Interoperability today announced its Board of Directors, a major step advancing its goal to spearhead the creation of a platform to achieve integration of medical technologies in a plug-and-play manner.

“It is vital that all forms of healthcare technology, including medical devices and electronic health records, be able to seamlessly exchange information so that the quality and safety of care can be improved and costs can be reduced,” said Michael M.E. Johns, M.D., the founding chairman of the Board of Directors.

“The current lack of plug-and-play interoperability between medical devices, applications, enterprise systems and electronic health records hinders physicians from quickly and easily being able to access information that aids in making the best decisions for patients. It can materially compromise patient safety, and result in repeated manual entry of data and other inefficiencies that waste billions of dollars each year,” said Johns, who most recently served as interim executive vice president for medical affairs of the University of Michigan Health System and is a former chancellor of Emory University.

The term “plug-and-play interoperability” refers to the ability of two or more systems to appropriately, seamlessly, and interchangeably share and use information. What distinguishes the Center for Medical Interoperability is the comprehensive nature of its approach and that its membership consists of hospitals and health systems. This membership structure is designed to drive change by leveraging members’ extensive market presence and expertise to support standards-based, plug-and-play solutions at a scale that will impact the nation’s healthcare ecosystem.

A key element of the Center’s strategy will be a research and development lab where solutions are collaboratively developed, tested and certified. The Center will work with its members to understand business, clinical and technical requirements, and with the healthcare marketplace in a vendor-neutral manner to develop solutions and share performance results to help drive adoption.

“A central lab will offer our members critical information about the plug-and-play interoperability of vendor products, and then those members can use their market presence to drive the healthcare ecosystem toward adopting products that allow seamless exchange of information,” Johns said.

The Center was launched with $10 million in funding from the Gary and Mary West Foundation, in conjunction with personnel and technology from the Gary and Mary West Health Institute.

The Center’s Board of Directors consists of the leading executives of some of the largest health systems in the United States. The board members represent different segments of the hospital world – for-profit, not-for-profit, academic and public – but they are unified by their desire to change how patient information is shared. The Board of Directors includes:

• Michael M. E. Johns, MD
  Founding Chairman, Center for Medical Interoperability
• Jeffrey Balser, MD, PhD
  Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
• William Carpenter III
  Chairman and CEO, LifePoint Hospitals
• Dean Harrison
  President and CEO, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare
• Milton Johnson
  Chairman and CEO, Hospital Corporation of America
• Stephen Jones
  President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Robert Wood Johnson Health System
• Thomas Priselac
  President and CEO, Cedars-Sinai Health System
• Jon Pryor, MD, MBA
  CEO, Hennepin Healthcare System
• Paul Rothman, MD
  CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Dean, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• Michael Schatzlein, MD
  Market Leader, Indiana and Tennessee Ministries, Ascension Health
• Joseph Smith, MD, PhD
  Chief Medical and Science Officer, West Health Institute
• Wayne Smith
  Chairman, President and CEO, Community Health Systems
• Nicholas Valeriani
  Chief Executive, West Health
• Chris Van Gorder
  President and CEO, Scripps Health

About the Center for Medical Interoperability
The Center for Medical Interoperability is accelerating the seamless exchange of information by solving the shared technical challenges facing health systems today. We are a member organization led by executives from some of the country’s premier health systems – for-profit, not-for-profit, academic and public – who are dedicated to empowering patients, healthcare professionals, the healthcare marketplace and our nation to optimize the use of health information. A 501(c)(3) established with funding from the Gary and Mary West Foundation to achieve plug-and-play interoperability, the Center is committed to leveraging the market presence and expertise of our members to compel change and improve the safety, quality and affordability of healthcare. Learn more at www.center4mi.org.

WASHINGTON—Hospitals and technology experts want the federal government to help create a platform or protocols for making sure medical devices can co-exist and interact on crowded wireless networks without disrupting one another.

Wireless technology promises more seamless interaction of medical devices and information technology in hospitals. But without more-effective testing, it can be difficult to tell whether introducing a new wireless device will interfere with (or be disrupted by) other traffic on the network.

Participants at a Tuesday conference convened by the Federal Communications Commission and the Food and Drug Administration called on the agencies to help address the problem.

Networked medical devices might include continuous-glucose-monitoring devices that automatically adjust insulin doses and surgical sponges that inform clinicians of their location, preventing them from being left in the patient’s body after surgery.

It’s relatively straightforward to test whether one device can exchange data with another. It’s more difficult to test how many devices will interact when they’re crowded onto the same wireless network in a hospital environment. That means managing medical data, voice calls between doctors and clinicians, and general Web surfing all at the same time.

If managing all these devices goes wrong, it can result in dropped or interrupted data, warned Rick Tevis, the director of clinical engineering at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pa., and Dr. Steven Baker, senior principal engineer at medical-device manufacturer Welch Allyn.

“Clinicians aren’t thinking about what network it’s on, or whether the device is regulated or unregulated,” said Kerry McDermott, vice president of public policy and communications at the not-for-profit Center for Medical Interoperability. “People buying these devices need to have confidence that (they) are going to work correctly.”

Shawn Jackman, the director of wireless product management and engineering at Kaiser Permanente, said one of its hospitals might have 70 different devices on its network, not including the patients and their families using Wi-Fi for their computers, phones and tablets. So Kaiser built a so-called test bed that allows the system to put devices through their paces—to see how they interact with each other in real-life environments.

Other providers and manufactures have developed their own test beds, but there are no shared standards for how to do it.

“It’s all separate,” Baker said. “We don’t have a protocol.”

Robert Jarrin, senior director of government affairs at semiconductor company Qualcomm, said the FDA and the FCC could address that problem by forging a private-public partnership that would create such a protocol or a shared environment to support more-effective testing.

A common protocol or shared testing environment is important because small or rural hospitals don’t have the resources to develop test beds on their own, Geisinger’s Tevis said. “We need to get it down to a level in which everyone can use it.”

via ModernHealthcare.com