Industry Leaders Discuss the “Tipping Point” Around Industry-Wide Interoperability in Healthcare

On Thursday, October 24, the Pittsburgh-based Center for Connected Medicine sponsored a webinar entitled “Improving Health Care Interoperability: Have We Reached A Tipping Point?” The Center for Connected Medicine, jointly operated by GE Healthcare, Nokia, and UPMC, facilitates connections among those who deliver, receive, and support health care, exploring firsthand how emerging models and integrated technologies can help them address the opportunities and challenges of their own organizations and regions.

Wednesday’s webinar involved a roundtable discussion led by Aneesh Chopra, president of the Arlington, Va.-based analytics company CareJourney, whose website describes it as being “founded in 2014 under the belief that our nation’s transition to value-based care is an important one, but without an ‘operating manual’ that can reliably deliver on the promise of better quality at lower cost.” Chopra is best known for having served as the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama and serving in that position from May 2009 through February 2012. Chopra was joined on the panel by Heather Cox, chief digital health and analytics officer at Chief Digital Health and Analytics officer, at the Louisville, Ky.-based Humana health plan; Steve Vogelsang, Chief Technology Officer, IP and Optical Networks, at the Espoo, Finland-based Nokia; and Kristian Feterik, M.D., eRecord Medical director, clinical informatics, and associate medical director, clinical documentation integrity, at UPMC health.

The reference point for the discussion was a report released in August by the Center for Connected Medicine, and co-sponsored by the Chicago-based HIMSS (Healthcare Information