A Medical Device Daily

Brian Levy, MD, chief medical officer and senior vice president of Health Language (HLI; Aurora, Colorado), which calls itself the world’s leading supplier of language engine technology for medical vocabulary, discussed two key technologies for maximizing healthcare information technology (HIT) at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS; Chicago) conference in Orlando.

Levy presented “The Essential Role of the Hospitalist in the Use of HIT” and co-presented “From Speech Recognition to Standards to Decision Support” with Nick van Terheyden, MD, chief medical officer of Philips Speech Recognition Systems.

Levy said the explosive growth of hospitalists, who are expected to surge from 20,000 at present to 30,000 by 2010, creates some “unique challenges” for maximizing the use of healthcare information technology.

As specialists who deliver care to hospital inpatients, many hospitalists work at more than one hospital, and different hospitalists may see the same patient over a 24-hour period, he said. Each hospital may have its own electronic health record (EHR) or may not have fully transitioned from paper.

HLI said hospitalists and the hospitals where they treat patients would benefit from portable technology to improve the collection of patient data, billing information and physician record sign-off.

Levy provided a case study that described how a handheld, PDA-based solution satisfied the data requirements of a hospitalist group for pay-for-performance data, reduced billing errors and helped improve the group’s efficiency and ability to provide high-quality care.

For example, he said the PDA-based application allows the physician to record basic patient and hospital information, select SNOMED CT and procedure visit codes and map this information to ICD-9-CM to facilitate appropriate billing. These databases can be beamed or e-mailed between group members and are sent daily to a central computer and billing company, Levy said.

van Terheyden and Levy discussed how converting speech into structured data provides a “wealth of decision-support information” at the point of care. Their presentation described how speech recognition technology can ease reporting times, deliver higher quality reports quickly and increase the utility of technology already deployed but underutilized within a hospital.

They also explored how the latest generation of speech-recognition technology can transform spoken text into codified data to generate clinically actionable information.

HLI’s Language Engine allows centralized access to medical terminology standards and generates mappings to create a common pool of standardized codes and concepts that enhance patient safety, facilitate clinical outcomes analysis and accelerate reimbursement. It also provides standards for modeling, storing, updating and distributing information consistently for interoperability between hospitals, regions and countries.

Language Engine solutions seamlessly integrate with EHRs for clients such as Cerner, McKesson, Misys, Partners Healthcare and Great Britain’s National Health Service.

Attendees, exhibitors hit record totals

This year’s HIMSS conference at the Orange County Convention Center on International Drive attracted record numbers of attendees and exhibitors, association president/CEO H. Stephen Lieber said on the final day of the gathering Thursday.

He said that as of Wednesday afternoon, the total of attendees had surpassed 28,400 and number of exhibitors topped 900. “Previously, our most successful conference was in San Diego in 2006, where 24,870 healthcare IT professionals attended and 859 companies exhibited,” Lieber said.

“This accomplishment was no small feat,” he said. “We would like to thank the general attendees, who support the urgent need for an electronic healthcare system. Thanks also go to the companies that have brought their newest innovations to our exhibition.”

Lieber added: “Healthcare IT is a major issue worldwide, and we believe our conference has furthered the cause. With recent presidential calls to action on the topic, consumers and healthcare professionals are aware of the value of an electronic healthcare system: reduced medical errors and lower healthcare costs. Our conference brings healthcare professionals together with the companies leading the industry to facilitate change and innovation.”

As of yesterday, 83% of space for the HIMSS 2009 exhibition, which will be held in Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center from April 4-8, had already been reserved. He said that was 7% higher than the amount of space reserved at this time last year.