Architecture Principles for Integrated Clinical Systems

Abstract: Intermountain Healthcare has 40+ years of experience in building clinical systems, including the HELP and HELP2 systems. This presentation will discuss specific principles that we have found to be essential for creating consistent, reliable, maintainable systems. Many of these principles were inherent in the HELP system as created by Homer Warner, Reed Gardner, T. Alan Pryor, and Paul Clayton. Some of the most important principles are: a centralized patient database, standardization of terminology, adherence to national and international data exchange standards, and enterprise wide patient identifiers. The presentation will describe the rationale for these principles as well as alternative approaches.

Bio:
Dr. Huff is Professor (Clinical) of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah, and the Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Intermountain Healthcare. Intermountain Healthcare is a charitable not-for-profit health care organization in the intermountain west that includes 24 hospitals, numerous primary care and specialty clinics, and a health plans (health insurance) division. He has worked in the area of medical vocabularies and medical database architecture for the past 20 years. He is currently a co-chair of the Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) Committee, a member of the Board of Directors of HL7, and a member of the ONC HIT Standards Committee. He teaches a course in medical vocabulary and data exchange standards at the University of Utah.