AAMI: Interoperability promises real-time data
SAN ANTONIO—The future of healthcare may include mobile emergency hospitals with CTs, operating rooms and clinical labs that can communicate with globally available EMRs, predicted James P. Keller, Jr., vice president health technology evaluation and safety at the ECRI Institute. After initial treatment, he said, providers may one day access real-time data from the patients’ home bedside using telemedicine.
While those achievements are far from realized, the drive toward real-time data flow and interoperability between medical devices is gaining momentum, according to several presenters at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference & Expo.
With the widening use of EMRs and EHRs, many hospitals are striving toward the interoperability of medical devices. That goal includes making sure hardware and software products interact correctly, oftentimes under a system comprised of multiple vendors. But while streamlining multiple products for real-time data flows can be problematic, the efforts are worthwhile, according to presenters.
Ken Fuchs, MBA, co-chair of IHE Patient Care Device Planning Committee, defined interoperability as the ability of two or more medical devices or clinical systems to communicate with one another to safely fulfill an intended purpose.
Those intended purposes are beneficial to both the patient and the provider, said Fuchs, who is also senior principal architect at Mindray North America, based in in Shenzhen, China.
One of the drivers pushing the interoperability of medical devices and software is the benefits of real-time data. As opposed to having nurses spend their time inputting patient data, which can sometimes result in errors, data could efficiently stream from medical devices to data closets, where they could be stored for analytics and even billing purposes, noted Keller.
Some technology is well on its way to achieving interoperability, while other segments are still in development, and future possibilities still remain a “gleam in the eye,” said Keller.
Developers of EMRs, computerized physician order entry systems, smart infusion pumps, ventilators and physiologic monitors are currently achieving, or at least, striving toward interoperability. Operating room integration and third-party integration are still in the “toddler years” of development, he said, while certain decision support tools are still on the horizon.
While those achievements are far from realized, the drive toward real-time data flow and interoperability between medical devices is gaining momentum, according to several presenters at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference & Expo.
With the widening use of EMRs and EHRs, many hospitals are striving toward the interoperability of medical devices. That goal includes making sure hardware and software products interact correctly, oftentimes under a system comprised of multiple vendors. But while streamlining multiple products for real-time data flows can be problematic, the efforts are worthwhile, according to presenters.
Ken Fuchs, MBA, co-chair of IHE Patient Care Device Planning Committee, defined interoperability as the ability of two or more medical devices or clinical systems to communicate with one another to safely fulfill an intended purpose.
Those intended purposes are beneficial to both the patient and the provider, said Fuchs, who is also senior principal architect at Mindray North America, based in in Shenzhen, China.
One of the drivers pushing the interoperability of medical devices and software is the benefits of real-time data. As opposed to having nurses spend their time inputting patient data, which can sometimes result in errors, data could efficiently stream from medical devices to data closets, where they could be stored for analytics and even billing purposes, noted Keller.
Some technology is well on its way to achieving interoperability, while other segments are still in development, and future possibilities still remain a “gleam in the eye,” said Keller.
Developers of EMRs, computerized physician order entry systems, smart infusion pumps, ventilators and physiologic monitors are currently achieving, or at least, striving toward interoperability. Operating room integration and third-party integration are still in the “toddler years” of development, he said, while certain decision support tools are still on the horizon.