Philip DePalo, ScD
Chief Attending Consultologist, Consultology
Involved with IHE for 5 years
I participate on the IHE patient care coordination committee and moonlight on the ITI committee. I am working with HIMSS during their interoperability showcases to bring IHE standards to the forefront of health IT. My primary interest is emergency care including 911 and intrafacility patient transport.
When I began my doctorate program I was eager to bring health IT to the transport medicine world. I was eager to create interoperable healthcare records between facilities during a patient transport. This would reduce repeat tests, decrease repetitive doses of medications, prevent medication errors, enable quicker diagnosis at the receiving facility and provide the transport team with a summarized history of their patient. Patients will reap the rewards of shared records through a reduction of common tasks, such as repeatedly filling out health surveys when visiting their physicians or being able to get real time access to their health records. These are benefits patients can realize instantly. While these are direct affects, patients will also benefit from the technology that is supporting them in the background. These benefits are not as obvious to patients, because they are not directly affected by them, but rather their healthcare experience is improved in both quality and efficiency.
We need software developers to take a vested interest in the benefits that the IHE provides so that they can realize a common framework that is standardized among vendors improves everyone’s experience. People go to a shopping mall because they know they can find their entire shopping experience in one place. Stores pay high dollar to lease space in a building full of their competitors because they realize the value in the customers shopping experience. This same concept applies to standardized healthcare technology.