St. Joseph Health to Launch Platform for Strategic Interoperability
St. Joseph Health (SJH), an integrated healthcare delivery system serving patients in California, Texas and New Mexico is launching its health informatics platform, tapping the Cambridge, Mass.-based InterSystems to deploy its HealthShare technology.
SJH has faced multiple challenges in integrating and sharing data across its many hospitals and continuum of care providers. Implementing and maintaining point-to-point interfaces was becoming a constraint on available technology resources, and this approach was not scalable. In addition, its legacy integration engine lacked the features and tools to support strategic objectives, its officials said.
As part of a strategic “data-driven initiative,” SJH officials hope that HealthShare initially will enable SJH to liberate data from data silos throughout the organization and community, build user-centered tools and workflows that improve clinical outcomes, and exceed user expectations while protecting capital and reducing ongoing costs.
“Interoperability is strategic for us, because it will enable SJH to derive value from its data. Healthshare is enabling the use of a single hub from which data can be collected, aggregated and distributed to any destination,” Bill Russell, SJH CIO, said in a statement.
Reflecting the high priority placed on achieving its strategic objectives, SJH is moving forward aggressively with the HealthShare implementation. The interface engine used in Texas and New Mexico was replaced last September. The HealthShare-based health information exchange (HIE), which functions as a data aggregation platform, went live in January 2014, and the interface engine in Northern California was replaced in mid-February. The current focus is on going live in Southern California by mid-year, officials said.
