Are you a healthcare CIO, analyst or consultant who can contribute to one of the stories listed here? If so, contact HCI Editor-in-ChiefAnthony Guerra, and you might get a call from one of our reporters. HCI March Editorial
Cover Story
For CIOs, integrating core clinical information systems with research trial databases is no easy matter. An array of IT issues — not to mention protocols to ensure privacy — can put up roadblocks. But real integration with research programs can not only yield breakthroughs in medicine, but often provide a significant revenue stream to health systems. HCI looks at what CIOs are doing to connect these two worlds.
Feature
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has created an automated system for six hospital rooms that can detect who is in a patient’s room and provide them with the appropriate data on a bedside television. By March 2008, UPMC plans to launch 24 smart rooms and begin studying whether the rooms are more effective than traditional ones at reducing errors and improving patient safety. HCI speaks to UPMC’s CIO to learn more.
DEPARTMENTS
Clinical
The ICU is one of the most complex areas of any hospital. These patients are the sickest of the sick, often on a dozen machines and drips to keep them alive. HCI investigates the most cutting edge approaches to ICU technology, and speaks to CIOs about how they are handling this area of the hospital from an application and IT-architecture point of view.
Financial
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has leveraged a vendor to manage capital projects in its Design and Construction Department. MSKCC will use the application for integrating its project finance and delivery infrastructures to improve project budget, contract, and invoice tracking. HCI speaks with MSKCC’s CIO Pat Skarulis, along with the head of Design and Construction to learn how this application was integrated into the overall enterprise.
Administrative
Document management is said to be the first crucial step in going electronic, yet even some sophisticated IDNs don’t have all their papers in order. HCI speaks to three different hospitals about the solutions they’ve chosen to get rid of the paper, and how those solutions work within the overall IT system.
Wireless
St. Luke's Episcopal Health System in Houston has contracted for support of up to 900 laptops and mobile devices. NetMotion's Mobile VPN will be used to help St. Luke's doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals boost mobile productivity by allowing them to stay connected to applications, and roam between multiple Wi-Fi hot spots. HCI speaks with the CIO of St. Luke’s to learn how this fits in with the hospitals overall wireless strategy.
Imaging
Until comprehensive, truly uniform DICOM standards are accepted across every element of the imaging universe (which is at present far from being the case), patient care organizations will continue to spend a lot of extra money, because the interfacing work needed to make some of the technologies play together requires a lot of effort. HCI gives a CIO-level update in this story about where the DICOM standard is now, and where it’s going.
Policy
A lack of tight standards is the bane of CIO’s existence. HCI will investigate what standards bodies, the government and private organizations — including HITSP and HL7 — are doing to disseminate real standards into the HIT universe, and thus allow information officers to put away the aspirin.
