An Office of the CTO Guest Blog
By Frank Nydam
In 2011 I posted a blog during HIMSS Orlando that began with a famous quote from Albert Einstein….“we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. Where HIMSS-2011 felt like it was all about “what if we could...”. The buzz at HIMSS-2012 was all about execution. It felt like the entire industry collectivity said “enough talking” lets go show the world we can do this. I saw an industry thinking outside of the box and not only challenging long held Healthcare IT dogma but also more importantly innovating. Building brand new businesses and delivery models. Confronting today’s and tomorrow’s challenges head-on with new mind set and brighter outlook for the future.
Speaking of innovations. Let me introduce you to Peake Healthcare Innovations. On Feb 16th 2012 we were proud to announce a new Cloud based Medical Imaging solution powered by VMware and Intel technology. Peake Healthcare Innovations is a joint venture of Harris Corporation and Johns Hopkins Medicine. Together Peake, VMware and Intel built a secure cloud platform for the management and delivery of medical imaging to any healthcare facility. Enabling physicians and other healthcare personnel to quickly and securely access medical images from a variety of end-user devices. The demo at both the Harris and Intel booths were always very busy and several people deep. This innovative solution will eventually help connect physicians around the world. It will enable a rural family physician to collaborate with a team of doctors to better treat a patient regardless of their location.
The VMware Healthcare team demonstrated just how the Cloud is providing the industry with a more agile platform on which to innovate. We were excited to show how we are working with the industry ecosystem to provide robust mobile access to patient care systems with our AlwaysOn™ Point of Care solution. Visitors experienced first hand how we can deliver high-fidelity medical imaging, EMR and CPOE from the Cloud to practically any caregiver device. We were also thrilled to provide a preview and demonstration of Horizon Mobile, which extends the reach of caregivers and improves their ability to provide safe secure patient care on Android based smartphones.
VMware AlwaysOn Point of Care
I was most pleased to welcome some of the most important consumers of Healthcare IT into the VMware family. Caregivers. Clinicians, nurses, informaticists, CNO’s and CMIO’s spent a great deal of time talking with us about their challenges with technology. How they often felt like technology was not really helping and in some cases they felt like it was impeding upon their ability to provide the patient care. They often left asking us (and each other) “now why is it that we haven’t been able to do that before!?”. With new tools like AlwaysOn Point of Care and Horizon Mobile, caregivers will themselves, begin to innovate and transform the delivery of patient care.
Dr. Lowell Catlett might have said it best during his closing keynote at CHIME. “with the next wave of new challenges already on the horizon, playing catch-up is not an option..” As an industry we can no longer accept business as usual and simply hope for the best. We need to provide both caregivers and the next-generation of Healthcare IT leaders a better IT system in which to innovate. It’s their innovation that will ultimately lower the cost of delivering quality Healthcare for all of us.
Frank
@VMwareHIT
@fnydam
