5. Find a vendor solution. Multiple vendors have multiple
solutions, yet it's the health system or the care team who coordinates
that. Facilities are paying a lot of money for interfaces between multi-
ple vendors or they have separate IT systems that need to be main-
tained and upgraded so that disparate systems can talk to each other.
They aren't going to be able to explore multiple vendors without a
testing lab certification — like what the Center of Medical
Interoperability, a non-profit research and development lab in
Nashville, Tenn., is working on. Technology solutions should be based
upon open-sourced reference architecture that can serve as a plat-
form for trusted and secure data exchange. We don't yet have that in
health care like other industries — finance, logistics, shipping, for
example — that have data liquidity.
Technology should be able to talk to itself — one to many, many to
many discussions through technology. But right now, it is the clinical
and operations staffs, or the health system IT department, that are
responsible for coordinating all the different systems. And that's not
how it should be.
Be transparent
None of this can be done in a silo. The transparency of the measure-
ments and outcomes must be known within the organization. There
isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to OR integration. Planning sessions
where everyone has an equal voice in creating the goals does work.
Because if you have a lot of naysayers, it won't work.
OSM
8 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8
Dr. Aldrich (kaldrich@center4mi.org) is chief clinical transformation officer at
The Center of Medical Inter-operability in Nashville, Tenn., a research and devel-
opment lab founded by health systems to help simplify and advance data sharing
among medical technologies and systems.
