In April, the Center for Medical Interoperability opened its new Nashville headquarters and a one-of-a-kind testing and certification lab in the oneC1TY development off of Charlotte Pike. The new facility's striking interior was designed around the theme of "Follow the Flow of Data."
The center is a 501(c)(3) cooperative research and development lab founded by health systems to simplify and advance data sharing. The center's membership consists of health systems and other provider organizations committed to eliminating current barriers to swift and seamless communication of patient information among medical devices and electronic health records.
"The opening of the headquarters and launch of the lab are enormous steps toward addressing the difficulties that health systems share in getting medical devices and electronic health records to 'talk' to each other," said Mike Schatzlein, MD, chair of the Center's board. "All too often," he continued, "this prevents physicians and other caregivers from having complete information about a patient readily available when they make important treatment decisions."
Ed Cantwell
The new lab serves as a research and development arm for its members to improve interoperability with the center's technical experts and visiting engineers from industry working together to develop IT architectures, interfaces and specifications that can be consistently deployed by health systems, medical device manufacturers, electronic health record vendors and others. The lab certifies devices and software that meet the Center for Medical Interoperability's technical specifications. Clinicians have the ability to explore the impact of technologies within the Transformation Learning Center at the lab to ensure solutions are safe, useful and satisfying for patients and their care teams.
"The lab will help bring about a 'plug-and-play' environment for healthcare in which there is assured interoperability and connectivity inside and outside the hospital," said Ed Cantwell, president and CEO of the Center for Medical Interoperability.