NASHVILLE, TN – September 3, 2008 – As physicians and hospitals become more strategically aligned and committed to working together to meet patient demand for seamless care, Informatics Corporation of America (ICA; www.icainformatics.com) points to the need for a technology solution to access, evaluate and act upon patient information across disparate systems. ICA’s solution, developed by practicing physicians and informatics professionals at Vanderbilt Medical Center and implemented in both enterprise and health information exchange (HIE) environments, now plays this vital role in supporting a new era of collaboration.
"The merging of enterprise and HIE models creates opportunities to drive improvements in the quality of medical care delivery and patient outcomes," says Gary M. Zegiestowsky, CEO of ICA, whose solution is presently operational at Bassett Healthcare’s enterprise of five hospitals and 27 clinics in Cooperstown, N.Y., with additional installations now underway throughout the country. "Increasingly, optimal care delivery, particularly for patients with chronic diseases, requires a multi-specialty team of health care providers, with coordinated services and processes both inside and outside the hospital setting. Technology that facilitates all these touch points for the patient and ensures connectivity among providers is the backbone for exemplary care."
In order to facilitate seamless care delivery, a new breed of scalable technology must integrate clinical systems across treatment settings, be accessible anywhere with Internet connectivity, and ensure secure interoperability of clinically relevant data and information. It should be flexible to meet current and future growth and capable of:
- Capturing and displaying information and data from multiple and disparate legacy systems that may have been in place for several years, transcending these silos of information to build a complete, longitudinal clinical view for timely, informed patient care
- Meeting enterprise-wide demand for easy, rapid installation and physician adoption, with minimal disruption to ongoing operations
- Driving improved patient outcomes through better coordination of care, support for disease management initiatives and care management services, particularly for chronic conditions
- Meeting budgetary requirements of enterprises and health information exchanges that are often financially strained
"Ideally, a technology solution should facilitate collaboration among providers with tools to communicate and share information, since patients are often treated in more than one place. Powerful advances in biomedical informatics are now enabling all the physicians treating a patient to access that patient’s longitudinal record and confer on treatment decisions," adds Jeff Cunningham, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at ICA. "As doctors and hospitals become more closely aligned in the delivery of care, the role of technology becomes a vital asset in raising the overall quality of care."
About Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)
Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) was formed to take innovative technology developed by practicing physicians and informatics professionals at Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader health care market. ICA’s solution builds on existing hospital and clinic systems to deliver a comprehensive electronic health record and tools ranging from a physician portal to secure messaging to disease dashboards. Visit www.icainformatics.com.
