The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is testing a health information exchange designed to ultimately link its 20 hospitals and 400 outpatient sites with 2,500 physicians. The HIE is using integration technology from dbMotion, Pittsburgh.
The long-term goal of the project is to provide caregivers with easy access to clinical data at any site, including information in inpatient records systems from Cerner Corp., Kansas City, Mo., and outpatient records systems from Epic Systems Corp., Verona, Wis., says G. Daniel Martich, M.D., chief medical information officer at the medical center.
In the tests, which started in February, 20 physicians at 19 hospitals are using the emerging network to access admission-discharge-transfer data from multiple information systems. They also will access clinical data, including medications, allergies, problem lists and lab results.
Because the organization has no plans to standardize on one clinical systems vendors’ products at all its diverse sites, it concluded it needed middleware to ensure interoperability, Martich says. He made his comments in an interview at the 2008 HIMSS Conference in Orlando.
This article is also available on-line at Health Data Management.