Hospitals Making Innovative Use Of Technology
By Greg Bengel, contributing writer
UPMC ranked 1st in InformationWeek 500’s rankings of the most innovative users of technology, and healthcare industry ranked highly overall
It appears that the healthcare industry may be ahead of the curve when it comes to innovations in technology. A number of hospitals placed very highly in InformationWeek 500’s rankings of the most innovative users of technology, with UPMC coming in at number one. Other hospitals ranking in the top 10 are Miami Children’s Hospital (ranking fifth), and Intermountain Healthcare (ranking seventh). You can see the top 250 innovative users of technology here, and an alphabetical list of all 500 companies who made the list here.
InformationWeek explains the success of their top ranking business, UPMC, in this article titled, “How UPMC Plays To Win In Healthcare IT.” The article explains that at UPMC, information technology must not only improve operations, improve care for patients, and drive down costs. It must also make money for UPMC. “At most companies,” the article explains, “that second goal is a nice-to-have if things work out that way.” UPMC is different in that it overtly demands that its IT organization develop technologies it can sell to providers. “In its role as both provider and payer, it takes an aggressive approach to implementing and developing technology to make healthcare more effective and efficient,” the article reads.
As UPMC’s volume of data doubles every 18 months and they expect to have 20 PB of data in the next three years or so, UPMC knows it will likely have to partner with a vendor, as they will not be able to afford enough data center capacity to cope with the growing data. The article explains how UPMC is actively looking to help vendors build a cloud infrastructure that will add as much value as possible for providers and insurers. “Under one of the industry's most ambitious IT initiatives,” explains InformationWeek, “UPMC plans to spend $100 million over the next five years to create a data warehouse that combines clinical, genomic, insurance, financial' and other information from more than 200 sources. It's partnering with Oracle, IBM, Informatica' and dbMotion.” The initiative directly addresses the new push in healthcare to incentivize quality of care and meaningful use, as it aims to provide physicians with cost-benefit analysis and patients with personalized medicine based on their individual genome.
In a second article titled “Miami Children’s Hospital Prepares For Telemedicine Growth,” InformationWeek takes a look at the second top-ranking hospital. The article discusses how Miami Children’s Hospital launched a $2 million telehealth command center in 2012 as the beginning of an initiative to expand the reach of pediatric care and make new sources of revenue. The center has high-definition cameras and monitors that enable both physician-to-patient and physician-to-physician communication. The technology also allows for diagnostic tests to be read remotely. Miami Children’s Hospital developed three telemedicine models: mobile, semistatic' and extremely static. Check out the article for a rundown of each of these models.