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www.center.hu / Archive / News / october, 2005 / San Diego Residents to Benefit from Regional Health... 

San Diego Residents to Benefit from Regional Health...

San Diego Residents to Benefit from Regional Health...

Sun Microsystems to Power Real-Time Regional Health Information Network to Help Improve Patient Safety, Enhance Quality of Care and Reduce Healthcare Costs

Santa Clara, CA -- October 3, 2005 - San Diego County residents will soon benefit from one of the most advanced regional healthcare networks in the nation. The state-of-the-art project will be fully supported by an end-to-end solution from Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), the creator and leading advocate of Java technology. Regional networks are considered a critical step in developing a nationwide interoperable health information network that can benefit all Americans - a primary goal of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and many Congressional leaders.

Specifically, the San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) Foundation selected the Sun Java Integration Suite - the leading integration and composite application development platform and a component of Sun´s Java Enterprise System offering - to support its regional health information organization (RHIO) initiative, called the San Diego Medical Information Network Exchange (SD MINE) project. The Sun Java Integration Suite will enable SD MINE to intelligently cross-match patient data from disparate points of care into a single patient record that is accessible to all organizations within the RHIO.

San Diego County healthcare providers are working to develop a technology and infrastructure model that connects the entire healthcare community to enhance patient safety and quality of care. Healthcare providers intend to establish a RHIO that, when fully operational, will bring together patient information from the county´s 35 hospitals, 7,000 physicians, more than 70 clinics, 378 pharmacies, community labs, radiology facilities, nursing homes, healthplans and public health information systems to serve the three million residents in San Diego County.

˝Sun´s delivery of a cost-effective, single vendor solution to improve patient safety and increase efficiency means RHIOs can benefit from secure access to need-to-know clinical and financial history,˝ said Wayne Owens, vice president, Healthcare Integration Platforms, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ˝By selecting Sun, SD MINE has chosen an affordable, end-to-end RHIO solution that delivers a comprehensive ´single view´ of disparate patient data and leverages the flexibility of a Service-Oriented Architecture.˝

The groundbreaking collaborative project will be uniquely designed to support the improvement of patient safety, quality of care, and efficiency of healthcare delivery through the use of information technology for secure exchange of health information. The SDCMS Foundation selected Sun as its sole technology partner because of Sun´s unique ability to offer a comprehensive solution for the RHIO initiative. Several other RHIOs in the United States currently face significant cost overruns and implementation issues because of the use of multiple technology solution providers.

˝After almost two years of intensive research and discussions with national experts and local stakeholders, we have identified an experienced and reliable technology partner that can offer a fully integrated solution for the entire county of San Diego,˝ said Stephen Carson, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of the San Diego County Medical Society Foundation. ˝We chose Sun for this initiative because of its proven experience in implementing all requirements of our community stakeholders. In addition, its mature and widely-used Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) solution has successfully solved duplicate medical record issues for some of the largest integrated delivery systems in the world.˝

Over the next 90 days, the SDCMS Foundation will work closely with community stakeholders to establish a governance structure and a priority list of projects that will roll out in phases. Potential first-round projects include credentialing programs and linking emergency rooms throughout the county with a safety net of providers and clinics in order to find a medical home for uninsured patients who regularly show up in the emergency rooms. The initial efforts would also focus on the development of a clinical messaging system to efficiently track hospitalized patients; a community-wide bridge to immunization and diabetes registries; and a single portal for patient education, allowing patients quick and easy access to eligibility, balance-due verification and various healthcare resources.

RHIO Benefits to Patients and Physicians

Sun will work with the SDCMS Foundation to establish a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based framework to help the San Diego RHIO enhance public safety, increase efficiencies and improve clinical outcomes. San Diego and other counties throughout the United States are looking to RHIOs as a way to provide patients and physicians with time- and cost-saving benefits, including:

 - Better patient care via comprehensive ˝real time˝ medical information delivered electronically to the point of care, including medication management, ePrescribing, laboratory results, radiology images, as well as in-patient and out-patient care tracking to improve the efficiency of clinical and administrative functions.
 - Faster patient registration and service through the use of ˝smart card˝ technologies that help eliminate repetitious form completion and medical history compilation, as well as the processing of Health Savings Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and health plan claims. Payer and provider administrators are also estimated to save five to ten percent of their administration costs through the automation of previous manual and paper-based processes.
 - True interoperability across legacy systems, ultimately offering connection between physician offices, medical centers, hospitals, labs, pharmacies, home healthcare, ancillary support systems, public health, employers and payers.
 - An increased return on investment through a ˝single patient view˝ powered by the Sun SeeBeyond eIndex[TM] Global Identifier. The eIndex EMPI technology provides the ability to rapidly distill millions of bytes of data for patients with duplicate names from multiple patient records into a single user display that can be seamlessly transferred to the appropriate fields in the patient´s electronic medical record (EMR), practice management system, ePrescribing tool or Continuity of Care Record.
 - Secure, Internet-based clinical messaging facilitated by Sun´s portal that allows open standard connections across disparate systems.
 - HIPAA compliant secure transactions between physicians, hospitals and health plans. The ability to exchange claims, eligibility and authorization data in a HIPAA compliant X12 format is essential in order to speed payments and lower administrative costs for all points in the healthcare chain.
 - Future connection to a National Health Information Network via the Department of Health & Human Services-preferred SOA interoperable infrastructure. Open, standards-based Sun technologies such as the Sun Java Enterprise System and the Solaris 10 Operating System are designed to support system interoperability.

Strong Support for SD MINE and Sun Microsystems

Dr. Molly Coye, CEO of the Health Technology Center (which is managing CalRHIO, a collaborative statewide initiative):
˝The California Regional Health Information Organization (CalRHIO) applauds efforts by communities like San Diego to improve patient safety and care through the use of information technology. The SD MINE project is a big step toward accomplishing our goal of being able to securely exchange health care information statewide.˝

Zara Marselian, CEO of La Maestra Community Health Centers:
˝The SD MINE project is a means to bridge numerous software systems, allowing for the delivery of patient care through already existing networks. The manner, however, is more efficient and reliable.˝

Dr. Larry Smarr, Director of California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2):
˝Creating a service-oriented architecture that allows for re-use, future growth and true interoperability of the IT infrastructure is the cornerstone for driving down the cost of healthcare delivery while giving clinicians the tools to do their jobs better, safer and with a higher level of satisfaction. Virtually everyone involved in healthcare - from patients and their families, to physicians, nurses, and hospitals, to health plan leaders responsible for cost and quality management - can benefit from the groundwork that the SD MINE project has undertaken.˝

Dr. Carol Young, President of the San Diego County Medical Society:
˝The SD MINE project infrastructure creates cost and time incentives that will enable physicians to focus on the patient, not the paperwork.˝

About San Diego County Medical Society Foundation

The San Diego County Medical Society Foundation is a 501.c.3 independent, charitable, not for profit organization created by the San Diego County Medical Society. Its mission is ˝to address unmet healthcare needs for all patients and physicians in San Diego County through education and innovation.˝ The Foundation has active initiatives in Technology, Access to Care, Consumer Health Education, Community Mobilization of Retired Physicians and Support and Policy Training for Medical Students.

About Sun Java Integration Suite

The Sun Java Integration Suite, formerly the SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network Suite (SeeBeyond ICAN Suite) is now the sixth suite in the Sun Java Enterprise System (Java ES). The new technology suite is a result of Sun´s recent acquisition of SeeBeyond. With nearly one million Java ES subscribers to date, the addition of the Sun Java Integration Suite will build upon Java ES´s proven success, and position it as the most complete software platform for building Service-Oriented Architectures, Web services and composite applications. More information on the Java Enterprise System is available at http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- ˝The Network Is The Computer˝ -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world´s most important markets. Sun´s philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

 

Forrás: Sun Microsystems
www.sun.hu

2005-10-05 14:05

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