HIMSS launches Innovation Center in Cleveland to focus on interoperability
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is putting some brick and mortar behind its efforts to bolster innovation in healthcare technology, with a focus on interoperability.
On Feb. 19, H. Steve Lieber, CAE, HIMSS President and CEO, announced that in mid-October, the society will open a 12,500 square foot Innovation Center in the newly-named Global Center for Health Innovation (formerly the Cleveland Medical Mart) in Cleveland. Plans also call for an additional 12,500 square feet of exhibition space, which he said will be doubled by 2016.
The new Innovation Center will offer ongoing services as well as exhibitions, educational programming and consumer-oriented applications for health delivery organizations and health IT businesses. Lieber said the move focuses on one aspect HIMSS’ commitment of transforming healthcare: interoperability, or the ability to easily and securely exchange electronic patient data.
“This is an absolutely necessary ingredient to the changes in the way care is delivered and the results that the care produces,” he said. The center is a “step in the ability to validate those innovation solutions that achieve this necessary aspect of interoperability.”
The HIMSS Innovation Center not only is a physical presence, but a “24/7 virtual presence,” explained HIMSS’ Executive Vice President Carla Smith during the press conference.
“We intend to establish an internationally recognized center of excellence, not a center of excellence focused on one nation,” she said. “It is going to be working with entities from around the globe.”
In specific terms, the Center is a place where solution providers—or any entity with systems that must prove compliance with interoperability requirements (i.e. Meaningful Use)—
can test and demonstrate systems, Smith said. For example, it will seek to help stakeholders face “real-world problems and challenges” in improving healthcare IT for both clinical workflow and financial transactions.
The Center consists of two areas: the health IT ecosystem and exhibition space. The ecosystem will allow developers to test and demonstrate clinical and business systems, whether developers, patient care devices and mobile devices. Initial use cases will focus on acute care, ambulatory care, medical banking and home care, with more to come in the future, she said.
Smith stressed that the IT ecosystem allows entities to test and demonstrate interoperability virtually. “You don’t have to physically come to the Innovation Center.”
Those who opt to visit, however, will be able to walk through the ecosystem, see the laboratory space, and enter the exhibition, the second component of the Center. The rolling exhibition will explore topics of interest such as patient-centered medical homes, mobile health and consumer-driven health.
Educating policy makers also is an aim of the Innovation Center, Smith said, “so they can learn more how a secure, interoperable exchange of health information can help patients get better quicker, help address syndromic issues, population health, etc.”
Cleveland is a place where there is a “natural audience” for healthcare innovation, said Lieber. Further, it provides “an extremely high visibility for what we want to do” due to its proximity to the Cleveland Convention Center, he said.
The possibility of specialized conferences focusing on interoperability is “absolutely in our thinking,” he added, although the Cleveland Convention Center is too small to host HIMSS’ annual conference.
More information and resources on the HIMSS Innovation Center will be available at HIMSS 2013 annual conference and exhibition, scheduled on March 3-7 in New Orleans.