Becker's Hospital Review

92 Health IT Cleveland Clinic, Medstar, Others Begin to Monetize Their Innovation By Helen Gregg P roprietary software developed by Pittsburgh-based UPMC uses available data to help physicians choose the lowest-cost option that produces a patient outcome equal to or better than the best outcome recorded in past case files. Physicians can then see their own results in comparison with results from their de-identified colleagues. The software cost UPMC an estimated $5 to $12 million to develop. However, the health system could recoup some of that outlay through its plan to sell the software to other providers. UPMC is not the only provider looking to cash in on homespun innovation. Cleveland Clinic Innovations, a tech development hub within the health system, turns ideas culled from the organization's employees into usable and often marketable products. Since 2000, the center has spun out 66 companies that have received a total of more than $750 million in equity investment to date. Cleveland Clinic also partners with other healthcare providers, such as Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health, to similarly develop and sell new technology. Since 2009, the MedStar In- stitute for Innovation has been creating and sometimes commercializing new technologies based on ideas from health system employees to create an additional revenue stream for the organization, according to a report in The Washington Post. It's a growing trend — UCSF's Center for Digital Health Innovation and Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital's iHub operate under a similar model. These centers aim to cash in on a native resource — employees' innovative ideas. "I think the theme is there's a huge amount of intellectual and creative talent capital in these large healthcare systems," MedStar Institute for Innovation director Mark Smith told the Post. n Where Hospital IT Departments Are Adding Staff By Helen Gregg A majority of healthcare providers plan to hire at least one full-time IT staffer in the coming year, according to a survey from HIMSS Analytics. A majority of these new hires will work in clinical application support, according to the survey. The top 10 areas for planned IT hires over the next year include: • Clinical application support (58 percent) • IT security (35 percent) • Help desk (34 percent) • IT management (32 percent) • Project management (27 percent) • Financial application support (23 percent) • Clinical informatics (21 percent) • System design and implementation (20 percent) • Systems integration (17 percent) • Database administration (17 percent) Survey results are based on responses from 200 IT executives. n The Conflicting Views on Epic's Interoperability By Helen Gregg I n July, Rep. Phil Gingrey, MD (R-Ga.), blasted electronic health record giant Epic during a hearing on technology and healthcare hosted by the Subcommittees on Com- munications and Technology and Health, saying the platform is not interoperable. "Congress has spent, as we all know, something like $24 bil- lion over the past six years buying products to facilitate in- teroperability, only to have the main vendor under the pro- gram, Epic, sell closed platforms," he said. "Do you believe the federal government and the taxpayers are getting their money's worth subsidizing products that are supposed to be interoperable, but they're not?" He referenced a RAND report, which cites a lack of interoper- ability as a reason EHRs have not yet reached their full po- tential. The report draws specific attention to Epic, saying the closed platform makes data exchange with Epic difficult and costly. [1] Epic disagrees. Peter DeVault, director of interoperability at Epic, told Politico Epic providers exchanged 313,000 records with providers using different EHR systems in June 2014 alone. "If you talk to our customers and [see] the ease in which they're able to set up connections with non-Epic sites, you'll find exactly the opposite, that we have a great reputa- tion," he said in the report. According to a recent KLAS report, both sides may have a point. Interviews with 28 total Epic and non-Epic providers revealed exchanging data between Epic systems and other vendors' EHRs is not easy, but providers have found ways to successfully share patient data. The most commonly cited way to exchange data between the systems was through a regional or statewide health information exchange, or through a health information services vendor. Some were able to achieve direct interoperability between the disparate systems, though the brunt of the effort often fell on the non-Epic customer. "Epic is seen by many competitors and providers as not play- ing well with others," said report author Mark Allphin in a KLAS news release. "Yet the providers we interviewed told us a more complex story. Data is being shared, but the ef- fort required to get there can be very different depending on whether you are on the Epic side of the exchange or with some other vendor." Regardless, Congress is asking the ONC to take action. In comments attached to a recent spending bill, the Senate Ap- propriations Committee has asked the ONC to investigate the problem and "take steps to decertify products that proactively block the sharing of information." The senators, Democrats and Republicans, say not doing so would both limit the clini- cal and operational benefits of EHRs and be misusing tax- payer dollars. [1] An Epic spokesperson denounced the report, asserting the report's Department of Veterans Affairs authors were at- tempting to make the VA's system, VistA, look better by com- parison, reports Politico. n

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