Lab dedicated to breaking down data barriers that prevent doctors from having quick, complete access
to patient information
Nashville, TN (April 6, 2017) – The Center for Medical Interoperability (“The Center”) has
opened its headquarters and launched a one-of-a-kind testing and certification laboratory that will
improve patient safety and care. The Center is dedicated to improving care by accelerating the
seamless flow of information among medical technologies and systems.
The Center’s membership consists of health systems and other provider organizations committed to
eliminating current barriers to swift and seamless communication of patient information among
medical devices and electronic health records. This will improve patient care by providing clinicians
with quick and easy access to all relevant patient data in real time.
The lab, located in Nashville, serves as a research and development arm for its members to improve
interoperability, which is the ability of information systems and technology to work smoothly and
efficiently with each other. The Center’s technical experts and visiting engineers from industry work
together to develop IT architectures, interfaces and specifications that can be consistently deployed
by health systems, medical device manufacturers, electronic health record vendors and others. The
lab certifies devices and software that meet the Center’s technical specifications. Clinicians explore
the impact of technologies within the Transformation Learning Center at the lab to ensure solutions
are safe, useful and satisfying for patients and their care teams.
“The opening of the headquarters and launch of the lab are enormous steps toward addressing the
difficulties that health systems share in getting medical devices and electronic health records to ‘talk’
to each other,” said Mike Schatzlein, MD, chair of the Center’s board. “All too often, this prevents
physicians and other caregivers from having complete information about a patient readily available
when they make important treatment decisions. Enabling this type of seamless communication is
crucial to improving patient safety and reducing clinician burnout”.