Connecting Devices and Data on the Healthcare Network

Abstract

ing enormous changes that are unprecedented in scope, complexity, promise, and risk—and they are occurring all at the same time. Technological changes are accelerating in hundreds of categories of medical devices and systems at a pace that defies many organizations’ capacity to absorb them. Stand-alone devices are morphing into networked devices and systems that add significant costs, integration complexity, and new operational risks to an infrastructure that is already pushing the limits of what the national healthcare system can understand, afford, or safely deploy. Most healthcare organizations are not well prepared to handle major change in even one functional area, much less in several areas all at once, and there is no clear precedent—no MBA coursework—for healthcare organizations or professionals on how to comprehend and manage sectoral changes of this magnitude. Some of the skill sets and management tools being imported into healthcare from information technology (IT), banking, telecommunications, and other industries are useful, but others are decidedly not. Among the many factors moving us toward a convergence of medical devices and IT systems, we should note that: 1. The convergence of biology, informatics, and engineering is turning healthcare into an information industry.1 But healthcare is profoundly different in many ways from most of the manufacturing, finance, Internet, and telecommunications models that have built trust and investments in IT systems. This new healthcare “industrial space” is a highly dynamic and complex frontier that will require new working relationships between doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, clinical engineers, medical device manufacturers, third-party service providers, and IT experts. Traditional roles will need to be redefined, and new roles will need to be invented. 2. As national attention is focusing debate on healthcare costs, healthcare organizations are planning for the convergence of established and maturing technologies to deliver better quality of care at lower cost. Results will include improved patient care and satisfaction, fewer medical errors, increased revenue, lower costs, and better productivity.2 3. Heightened connectivity between medical devices, the network, IT hardware, and software required to manage data will make new data sets available for use in the electronic health record, for institutional research and other clinical applications.3 4. The convergence of IT systems and medical equipment systems is changing the practice of clinical engineering—the priorities, the body of knowledge, and the scope of work. As the clinical environment moves from stand-alone medical devices to a world dominated by clinical systems intimately bound to IT departments by network connections and the two-way flow of data and clinical decision support Mario Castaneda, CBET, BS, MBA, is the national director of the Clinical Technology Department at Kaiser Permanente, and is president-elect of the American College of Clinical Engineering. Email: Mario.Castaneda@kp.org. Connecting Devices and Data on the Healthcare Network