Why Medical Device Integration Helps Clinicians: CIO Series

Why medical device integration helps clinicians: CIO series

While the most meaningful information about a patient’s health comes out of interactions directly with clinicians, valuable data is also available through monitoring patients using a variety of medical devices. A challenge for healthcare organizations and providers is to incorporate the latter effectively into the EHR system and the patient’s electronic record so that the most reliable health information is available to the care team at the point of care. Given the number of manufacturers and diversity of their products, efforts to implement medical device integration (MDI) requires careful consideration and strategic coordination of project managers, health IT staff, and other pertinent personnel.

John C. Lincoln Health Network in Phoenix, Ariz., successfully completed its MDI project last year by working closely with its EHR and MDI vendors, Epic Systems and iSirona, respectively, to make integrating medical devices part of the system-wide overhaul of its health IT systems. Overseeing those projects was Robert Slepin, VP/CIO at John C. Lincoln. In this installment of the CIO Series, Slepin discusses best practices for MDI as well as the tangible benefits for clinicians when this kind of patient monitoring is implemented correctly.