David McCallie, MD, is senior vice president for Medical Informatics at Cerner, a global leader in health information technologies. McCallie is responsible for a research and development team focused on developing innovations at the intersection of computer science and clinical medicine.
In addition to his efforts at Cerner, he is working with other industry collaborators to create a standards-based approach for enabling EHRs to become open platforms for application development. McCallie was integral to the creation of the CommonWell Health Alliance, a multi-vendor trade association that delivers widespread EHR-to-EHR interoperability. McCallie also helped create Direct, a simplified approach to secure clinical messaging, which is now a key component of meaningful use.
Q. Interoperability is in the spotlight as government agencies, healthcare providers and EHR partners consider how to support the exchange of data easily among disparate systems. What is Cerner’s philosophy on interoperability?
A. Interoperability is essential to a provider’s ability to improve the quality of care. We strongly believe patients have a right to have their health information available to their providers, at the point of care, regardless of the system or vendor of origin. While the entire healthcare industry will benefit from interoperability, ultimately, patients stand the most to gain. As a patient, you shouldn’t have the burden of filling out the same medical history over and over again, and you shouldn’t have to carry physical copies of your health records from doctor’s office to doctor’s office. The industry as a whole needs to work together to solve this problem.
Q. Right now there is a lack of common standards in the healthcare industry when it comes to interoperability. How is Cerner advancing widespread interoperability?
A. Cerner has long been a pioneer of interoperability. Common standards across the industry are a must. In some cases, good standards exist, but in others new standards and new approaches are needed.
In 2009, I worked with industry partners to create Direct, a simple, secure emailing standard designed to create universal “push” connectivity to providers at other organizations. I am proud of the fact that Cerner has contributed more than 200,000 lines of open source code to Direct, code that is now used by many Direct implementations. Based on its ability to allow providers to communicate with one another, it was incorporated as a meaningful use requirement.
In 2013, Cerner co-founded the CommonWell Health Alliance, a vendor-led collaborative committed to achieving ubiquitous, nationwide “query” interoperability. In November, Cerner offered to provide free CommonWell Health Alliance services to our clients until January 2018. Several other CommonWell members have done the same since then to encourage rapid growth of the network.
Cerner continues to demonstrate its commitment to interoperability by contributing both financial and intellectual capital to new standards, like HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), that allow for easy access to the discrete data elements that make up the patient’s clinical record. Last year at HIMSS, we demonstrated the ability to use FHIR to enable “SMART App” plugins to our EHR platform. We have expanded on that capability this year at HIMSS, and anticipate general availability to our clients later in the year.
In December 2014, Cerner announced our participation in Project Argonaut, a vendor and healthcare organization collaborative that committed to contribute resources to advance the adoption of FHIR.
Cerner continually works with our competitors with the goal to have an effective national health data exchange.
Q. What is an open platform, and how does it relate to interoperability?
A. Open platforms are structured in ways that make it easy for other systems, including those of competitors, to access the data stored within them. These types of systems facilitate interoperability by making it easier to move information in and out of their systems and to repurpose it in ways that advance patient care.
The most exciting open platform work underway at the present time is the SMART on FHIR specification, which enables third-party applications to be plugged directly into the EHR workflow. These “apps” allow for new functionality to be exposed to patients and to clinicians, while maintaining the security and integrity of the core medical record. We also expect to see a new generation of consumer-facing mobile apps that can leverage FHIR and other standards to directly access data within the EHR. We believe that these emerging apps will become another key aspect of interoperability, by providing the patient with a direct connection to their own medical data.
Visit us at Booth number 913
About Cerner
Cerner’s health information technologies connect people, information and systems at more than 18,000 facilities worldwide. Recognized for innovation, Cerner solutions assist clinicians in making care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help health care organizations manage revenue, as well as a wide range of services to support clients’ clinical, financial and operational needs. Cerner’s mission is to contribute to the improvement of healthcare delivery and the health of communities. On Feb. 2, 2015, Cerner Corporation acquired substantially all of the assets, and assumed certain liabilities, of the Siemens Health Services business from Siemens AG. Nasdaq: CERN. For more information about Cerner, visit cerner.com, read our blog at cerner.com/blog, connect with us on Twitter at twitter.com/cerner and on Facebook at facebook.com/cerner.
Certain trademarks, service marks and logos set forth herein are property of Cerner Corporation and/or its subsidiaries. All other non-Cerner marks are the property of their respective owners.
