Doctors from around the world have been turning their attention to the latest breakthroughs in healthcare IT this week at the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Atlanta, Georgia. Featuring one of the year’s biggest tech expos, the conference is a chance for the society’s more than 20,000 members to see how healthcare is rapidly transforming thanks to an array of new computerized technologies designed to put more information in doctors’ hands.
In touch: As we
reported during the Olympics, another GE healthcare IT solution was in the spotlight recently. The Centricity imaging system, seen above, provides an “electronic trading post” for radiology images.
GE is at the event, where — as we described in our story on Monday — the healthcare team unveiled Qualibria — an innovative computerized system that provides doctors with real-time clinical data and faster access to current research — right at a patient’s side. It’s been developed using three decades of clinical information from the Intermountain Healthcare system of hospitals and through a partnership with the Mayo Clinic. In the video clip below, Dr. Brandon Savage, who is GE Healthcare IT’s Chief Medical Officer, gives an overview of why the HIMSS meeting is so important.
The critical role that healthcare IT needs to play is also the subject of a new book, Paper Kills 2.0, which is published by the Center for Health Transformation. Chapter 2 of the book focuses on Intermountain’s successful blueprint for care, and is co-written by Marc Probst, Intermountain’s Chief Information Officer; Dr. Brent James, Intermountain’s Chief Quality Officer; and Brandon.
As they note, “Simply keeping up with current medical knowledge is a Herculean task as the growth of medical knowledge is estimated to double every 18 months to two years.” It’s why Intermountain has been a pioneer in using computerized technologies to tackle the complex issue of medical best practices. “If physicians know what standard of care has proven most clinically effective at the onset of each patient encounter,” the authors write, “then physicians can more efficiently develop a treatment plan for each patient.”
But the healthcare IT journey for Intermountain didn’t begin with a focus on computers or IT. Rather, it was born from a passion for efficiency. As the authors note: “About 30 years ago, Intermountain adopted many of the philosophies of W. Edward Deming, the quality improvement pioneer who is credited with revolutionizing manufacturing, most notably through his work with the Japanese auto industry. The process began with a series of studies to measure variations in care delivery that were based on Deming’s quality improvement theory. Intermountain embraced the philosophy that by improving the outcomes of clinical processes, the cost of operations would drop.”
