San Francisco-based UCSF and San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems have allied to create a new health information exchange platform focused on efficient sharing between organizations.
"Fragmentation of information is one of the most challenging impediments in healthcare today," Michael Blum, MD, UCSF associate vice chancellor for Informatics and director of the UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation, which houses this initiative for UCSF, said in a statement. "In human terms, the consequences are enormous: The lack of complete information on our patients leads to poor, costly care, delays in diagnosis or treatment, and dissatisfied patients — all due to health information systems that cannot communicate with one another. In this age of apps, social media, and mobile communications, this status quo is completely unacceptable to both patients and providers. We plan to change all of that with this partnership."
Here are five things to know about the partnership and its goals.
- UCSF and Cisco aim to jointly develop a platform to enable the efficient sharing of health data across platforms and among multiple organizations.
- The two entities will establish a collaborative center at UCSF's Mission Bay campus. Staff members and global health technology leaders will be able to test and scale the interoperability platform across software, systems and devices.
- They seek to address the one in three consumers that the ONC estimates is currently burdened with providing their own health information when seeking care from providers.
- The initiative plans to leverage healthcare, government and industry relationships in combination with UCSF's innovation team and Cisco's digital solutions for data and analytics.
- The platform pilot will be used in the UCSF medical center and ultimately expanded to other facilities through the UC system and other partners nationwide.