Center for Medical Interoperability could lease 16,000 square feet of space
A national nonprofit organization focused on changing how medical technologies work together is negotiating a lease on 16,000 square feet of space at the OneC1TY mixed-use development on Charlotte Avenue.
The location will house headquarters of the Center for Medical Interoperability, including its centralized lab. “It’s really going to be focused on innovation and being the R&D arm for health care,” said Kerry McDermott, vice president for public policy and communications for the center.
Over the summer, the center plans to relocate to OneC1TY near the 28th/31st Avenue Connector from temporary space in Green Hills.
Once its lease is finalized, the first office building at the health- and technology-focused mixed-use development will be fully leased. Other tenants of that 110,000-square-foot building will include anchor surgery practice Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance, technology giant Microsoft and health information management company MediCopy Services Inc., with causal Italian restaurant concept Pastaria Nashville to occupy ground-floor retail space.
The Center for Medical Interoperability has a staff of 20, including a leadership team of six led by Executive Director Ed Cantwell. Eventually, the plan is to grow the technical staff to as many as 100, including engineers and software architects. They will work to improve the flow of information between medical devices, electronic health records and other information technology systems.
“We think it should be easier and less expensive for devices to talk to each other and for devices to talk to electronic health records and other systems that support clinical decision-making, research and analytics,” McDermott said.
Originally part of the West Health Institute medical research organization in San Diego, the Center for Medical Interoperability was launched as an independent entity in August 2013 with $10 million in funding from the Gary and Mary West Foundation. Each member organization pays dues.
They are Dr. Jeffrey Balser, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; LifePoint Health CEO William Carpenter III; HCA CEO R. Milton Johnson; Community Health Systems CEO Wayne Smith; and Dr. Michael Schatzlein, market leader for Indiana and Tennessee with Ascension Health.
At its lab, the center will handle testing and certification of health care technology to make sure it works in a plug-and-play way. “Our job is to make health care technology work for the caregiver, for the physician and the nurse, so they can do the best job taking care of their patients,” McDermott said.