Case study: UPenn integrates patient data

After about a year of effort, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's network of hospitals and clinics will soon have access to a single, integrated view of key patient data. The project began, in essence, in October 2006, when UPMC inked a $35 million co-development deal and equity investment with SOA-based middleware and software tool maker dbMotion.

With the newly integrated architecture, doctors, nurses and other clinicians will be able to look at important data such as medications, drug allergies, lab results and immunizations all at once, despite the fact that the data came from multiple clinical systems including Cerner and Epic EMR technology. To roll out the new integrated view, UPMC will involve 45 providers at two ED sites, two ambulatory care practices and a 10-physician UPMC medical sub-specialty clinic. Eventually, it will be rolled out across the system's 20 hospitals and 400 outpatient sites, along with other doctors' offices and care facilities.

As useful as it is to integrate this data, will UPMC will be to share this data across a RHIO at some point (as policymakers would clearly like to see happen)?  If this integration was that tough, imagine doing it all over again amongst multiple providers. It's something to think about.

To find out more about the case:
- read this Information Week piece

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