With new leaders at the helm, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is looking to not just move healthcare IT forward, but take it to the next level, according to InformationWeek.
Rasu Shrestha became the president of the of UPMC's Technology Development Center after longtime CIO Dan Drawbaugh left the system in August. Joining Shrestha in the center's efforts is new UPMC CIO Ed McCallister.
Shrestha said he wants to make innovation the norm, instead of a separate activity.
One of UPMC's goals is to make health IT better coordinated and more efficient. They are doing this through projects such as putting together separately managed entities; for example they placed physician practices owned by the health system under common management in a new Health Services Division.
UPMC also has many IT projects in the works. One will help merge data analytics from multiple sources; another focuses on software that shifts information out of unstructured medical records; a third involves a partnership with GE Healthcare on a next-generation medical imaging system.
These are all examples of a health center that embraces innovation to provide better, more organized care. However, some feel that these types of innovations are stifled in the U.S., mostly because there are little to no financial incentives for use.
To that end, the healthcare industry, overall, still lags behind others when it comes to harnessing IT, according to Dick Escue, CIO at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
Escue, in a commentary, wrote that the industry is not harnessing all that technology can offer because market leaders are not delivering big enough advancements to the systems, with regulations part of the reason for that.
To learn more:
- read the InformationWeek article