“We have the technological capability to solve the problem, the only remaining question is, do we have the ‘will’ to see it to a final conclusion?"
(PRWEB) January 08, 2014
The Need for Universal Data Interoperability
As the healthcare system evolves from a paper-based system to an electronic system capable of capturing, storing and retrieving medical data for use by care providers in treating patients, the need to be able to capture data from the very source has become a real requirement that until now has been made nearly impossible due to issues involving interoperability. Interoperability is simply the “ability of one electronic source (medical device) to communicate with another electronic system," in this case an electronic records based system as found in most hospital and ambulatory facilities throughout North America.
The impact of this specific issue of interoperability or lack thereof, makes for inefficient use of care providers time as required to manually input data from one system to another. More importantly, the opportunity of human error in transposing and transcription of data can have drastic implications regarding quality of care received by the patient and in some cases, life altering consequences. According to one study conducted in a teaching hospital setting involving 287 medical records with an opportunity of data input error involving 558 entries, 167 (29.9%) of those opportunities resulted in an error.
“The need is great and the time for change is now,” according to Robert E. Higgs, President of ICUcare LLC., “We can no longer remain neutral or passive about this issue, we need to act decisively to develop and implement the necessary technologies that will make interoperability issues in any environment a thing of the past.”
“We have the technological capability to solve the problem, the only remaining question is, do we have the ‘will’ to see it to a final conclusion?" continued Mr. Higgs. “A final conclusion will require cooperation of the medical device industry and to a lesser degree, the medical software industry to assist in the development of the ‘middleware interface’ and finally, the healthcare industry to adopt and use the solution to the benefit of patient, care providers and the healthcare industry as a whole.”
The scope of the project requires the creation of an API for data interoperability between medical devices and healthcare systems in order to create an open market for devices and system integration reducing costs and increasing interoperability.
ICUcare is committed to developing an API for data interoperability between medical devices and healthcare systems, which will be provided to the industry at no cost. The API will allow healthcare providers access to a website/database to search for medical devices that map to their IT system infrastructures enabling interoperability between any devices to any system.
ICUcare has agreed to grant IEEE a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, and otherwise use the API and related software as necessary to install, execute, and provide the software on a non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free basis to third parties via IEEE-SA website.
ICUcare will work directly with the IEEE-SA in the development of a working Industry Standard/Specification for use by medical device manufacturers in producing future medical device firmware. The IEEE-SA will disseminate and distribute the final Industry Standard/Specification to the international community.
About ICUcare LLC
ICUcare, LLC (“ICUcare”) is a medical information and communication systems integrator/manufacturer and software developer. ICUcare is committed to applying innovative and technologically advanced solutions to the healthcare industry. The mission of ICUcare is to improve the quality of health care that patients receive by leveraging technologies such as Telemedicine, Telehealth and Electronic Health Records in such a way as to break down the barriers of economic, social and geography restrictions that too often establish and limit the choices that patients have in seeking quality health care. ICUcare has developed and certified the nation’s first Telemedicine/EHR platform and the first totally interoperable Personal Health Records based system capable of serving as a Health Information Exchange. These along with other software solutions have one thing in common, the ability to interface with a wide variety of disparate healthcare systems and medical devices. See http://www.icucare.com.