Track: Information Technology in Health Care
Minitrack: Strategies and Technologies to Exchange Medical
--------------- Information

This track addresses strategies and technologies that enable current and future information technology applications to exchange and share electronic, semantically consistent, medical information. Information interoperability increases the capability and value of Electronic Medical Records (EHRs). Infrastructure architecture that is scalable, flexible and utilizes data standards is required to achieve this goal. While many industries (e.g. financial services) have vendor independent interoperable systems, other industries, including medicine, do not. Both higher layer standards to facilitate the semantic sharing of information and lower levels of competing, overlapping, and missing standards harmonizing the transfer of medical information are in evolution. Existing and emerging standards such as ICD-9/10, LOINC, SNOMED and HL7v2.x/v3 do not meet traditional definitions of standards that promote interoperability because independent vendors seem unable or unwilling to achieve interoperability. It is possible that a strategic nationwide plan and supporting technology will help accomplish the goal of complete, consistent, and interoperable EMRs. Organizations including the government sponsored Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel are attempting to use existing standards as the basis for a Minimal Data Set (MDS) of medical information and discovering the limitations and inconsistencies of existing standards. This track will address the challenge of creating scalable infrastructure to seamlessly exchange semantically defined medical information between heterogeneous applications. It seeks papers relating to design science, implementation, case studies, and economic arguments for strategies and technologies to promote interoperability.

Topics and research areas include, but are not limited to:
* Interoperability of medical applications and devices
* Standards for Interoperability
* Strategy planning for interoperability
* Infrastructure that promotes information exchange
* Architectural strategies to encourage sharing data between heterogeneous devices and applications

Co-chairs:
Mark Gaynor (Primary Contact)
595 Common Wealth Ave Boston MA , 02215, USA
Direct Phone: +1-617-353-4159
Departmental Phone: +1-617-353-2523
Fax: +1-617-353-5003

Steve Moulton
818 Harrison Avenue , Dowling 2322 Boston MA, USA
Direct Phone: +1-617-414-5131
Departmetal Phone: +1-617-414-4841
Fax: +1-617-414-3836

James Rawn
Division of Cardiac Surgery
Brigham and Women's Hospital
75 Francis StBoston, MA 02115, USA
Phone: +1-617-732-7678