Healthcare Information Technology: IBM Health Integration Framework

IBM Healthcare Solutions Healthcare
To support your organization’s objectives

The IBM Health Integration Framework:
Accelerating solutions for smarter healthcare
Healthcare provider edition

2
Customers can quickly deploy solutions using
The IBM Health Integration Framework: Accelerating solutions for smarter healthcare

their existing health IT investments in their
current environment and at lower cost without
compromising flexibility and choice.

3 The IBM Health Integration Framework: Accelerating solutions for smarter healthcare

Finding the cure The IBM Health Integration Framework
Addressing the challenge of changing healthcare The IBM Health Integration Framework is a unified software
At a time when healthcare technology has never been more platform for implementing comprehensive solutions for health-
advanced,the industry has not kept pace in improving healthcare providers, healthcare plans and life sciences enterprises to
care access, cost, quality of care and patient satisfaction. But improve safety and quality of care, process efficiency, and
progress can take many forms, and forward-thinking organiza- patient and member satisfaction.
tions are instituting improvements in this vital field every day.
This approach is superior to the two traditional practices: cus-
Eight in ten healthcare leaders anticipate substantial changes tom development, which is lengthy and expensive, and
driven by global competition, more knowledgeable and packaged applications that are inflexible, stand-alone, and
demanding consumers, changing lifestyles and the need to require heavy customization. The framework enables custom-
address worldwide prevalence of chronic conditions that ers to choose from a variety of industry solutions that are
require immediate and long-term attention and tend to sap pre-integrated on common middleware and industry-specific
resources that could be devoted to valuable preventive prac- extensions. As a result, customers can quickly deploy solutions
tices. using their existing health IT investments in their current envi-
ronment and at lower cost without compromising flexibility
However, factors such as financial constraints, societal expecta- and choice.
tions and a focus on short-term needs over long-term solutions
can hinder even the strongest desires for reform. When parties
don’t perceive enough incentive to collaborate, they stay within IBM Solutions Business Partner Solutions
Solve client
their comfort zone and continue to follow their own familiar problems with
a common Health Life Health Life
but singular, and often sub-optimized processes. Hospitals
plans sciences
Hospitals
plans sciences
and extensible
platform

And then there’s the data. Reams of data. Giga-, tera-, petabytes
of data. Patient forms and lab results, regulatory compliance Leverage
industry IBM Global Business Services
reporting, research documents, fundraising and accounting expertise and IBM Global Technology Services
best practices
records. If data is digitized at all, it’s often spread over multiple
IBM Health Integration Framework
systems in incompatible formats, making access a multistep
process and comparative analysis a manual effort. Healthcare and Life Sciences Extensions

Build and Interfaces and Portals and Business
design faster adapters portlets Reference partner
The solution has many facets but, in broad terms, to move with industry Architectures ecosystem
Data and Process
accelerators Tools
toward a smarter, more effective healthcare experience for all, models
healthcare organizations have to focus on value, core processes
IBM product
Key Software Group Products
and collaboration, concentrating on what they do best and foundation as WebSphere
shared, trusted Information
doing it more efficiently. They need to exploit opportunities to platform Management
Lotus Rational Tivoli
improve quality and safety, form new partnerships, and build
future capabilities. And they must act with speed to institute
IBM Dynamic Infrastructure
change, set leadership agendas and manage risk and perfor-
mance with transparency.


Extensions and accelerators
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a business-centric
IT architectural approach that supports integrating your
business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services.
With the Smart SOA approach, you can find value at
every stage of the SOA continuum, from departmental
projects to enterprise-wide initiatives
The IBM Health Integration Framework delivers:
On top of the IBM SOA foundation, healthcare-specific
assets called extensions and accelerators add industry • Speed: Incorporates proven software foundation, healthcare-
relevance and open standards, integrate faster with legacy industry-specific extensions, pre-built solution accelerators
systems, build new services and provide new capabilities. and implementation patterns for faster deployment at lower
These include: risk.
• Flexibility: Provides a roadmap that enables customers to
• IBM InfoSphere Clinical Analytics: An integrated data build capabilities over time on their existing environment.
warehouse platform that provides a single source • Choice: Leverages an ecosystem of industry ISVs and IBM
of trusted administrative, clinical and research
solutions that are built on industry standards and integrated
information across the healthcare enterprise to help
into the framework.
improve operational efficiency and outcomes.
• Interoperability: Increases transparency across healthcare
• IBM WebSphere Message Broker with support for HL7: entities for more efficient information sharing, service
An advanced Enterprise Service Bus providing coordination and record keeping.
connectivity and universal data transformation for
assured delivery and message interchange between Combining strengths in partnership
multiple applications. The IBM Health Integration Framework includes an ecosys-
tem of independent software vendors and systems integrators to
• IBM Healthcare Industry Toolbox for WebSphere Portal:
provide a wide range of healthcare applications that are proven
Helps hospitals and clinics provide their patients with
to run on the framework. This means faster deployment, easier
personalized online, anytime access to on-demand
services such as appointments and payments, which integration, lower cost of operations, and an ever-expanding
can improve patient satisfaction and loyalty while community with powerful capabilities across clinical portals,
increasing hospital efficiency. clinical analytics, unified communications, privacy and consent
management, electronic health records and more.
• IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender Industry
Pack for Healthcare: Helps integrate a range of
Solutions
industry-standard data formats with your enterprise
These examples show how four leading healthcare organiza-
infrastructure with support for HIPAA EDI (including
tions took bold steps to improve the ways they administer care
5010, HL7 and NCPDP) with predefined templates, tools,
and conversion and validation maps to reduce risk. and organize their operations. With the help of IBM solutions,
they’re each contributing to smarter, more efficient and effec-
• IBM WebSphere Healthcare Content Pack: Provides a tive healthcare in four important categories: enterprise health
rich set of assets for enrollment, case management, analytics; healthcare service management and security; enter-
employer and group management, claims prise, patient and clinical portals; and clinical integration and
management, and provider collaboration solution interoperability.
areas.


Enterprise health analytics:
• Provides aggregation and analysis of information from
disparate systems across a healthcare enterprise, to improve
clinical, financial and administrative outcomes and results.
• Transforms data-rich environments into intelligent, high-
value information to help speed medical research, diagnosis
and treatment to improve patient care and help reduce
healthcare costs

Case study: University of North Carolina Health Care
System
For the University of North Carolina (UNC) Health Care
System, the problem wasn’t just more information than its sys-
tems could process. The data resided in multiple repositories, in
many forms—from X-rays to research studies to invoices—
with scant synchronization of systems and rarely a common
language for querying and compiling the information into
usable information. UNC’s data needed organizational man-
agement and analytics.

After starting consolidation and aggregation of its vast array of
data, UNC established governance procedures to create orga-
nizational boundaries and address regulatory compliance and
communications for the many groups that would access the data
for clinical, administrative and research purposes.
Smarter business outcomes
• Enables researchers, clinicians and administrators to
Then came the centerpiece of UNC’s new data management
understand complex, interrelated issues from multiple
solution: A robust, powerful data warehouse was established
information repositories.
using the IBM Healthlink Solutions Roadmap Methodology
• Reduces analysis and queries to minutes instead of the weeks
and was deployed using IBM’s Health Integration Framework.
or months required for manual searches.
The data warehouse links UNC’s data systems to provide a sin-
• Helps improve patient outcomes, disease management,
gle point of access to information.
regulatory compliance and research, and optimizes ROI.

Now patient records can be accessed, synchronized, interpreted
Key technologies:
and analyzed more quickly and thoroughly. Researchers can
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
run metrics and test theories in minutes instead of months. Says
IBM System z10
UNC Health Care System’s associate director of medical infor-
IBM DB2 for z/OS
matics, Dr. Donald Spencer, “The ready availability of
IBM InfoSphere DataStage
information changes the way people ask questions and think
IBM WebSphere Portal
about the problem on the fundamental level.”
IBM WebSphere Application Server
IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory


Healthcare service management and security: Enterprise, patient and clinical portals:
• Tracks assets, patients and staff to improve patient safety • Offers a secure portal-based user interface for the
and care. aggregation of information across a healthcare and life
• Enhances enterprise visibility to resources, increasing sciences enterprise with custom views defined by role.
efficiency and helping contain costs. • Allows Sharing of information and processes to increase
clinical efficiency, improve patient satisfaction, and reduce
Case study: major children’s hospital cost for customer service.
This major children’s hospital in the U.S. has earned an inter-
national reputation for quality pediatric patient care, education Case study: Catholic Healthcare West
and research. With 41 network hospitals and medical centers across three
states, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) had instituted an
Over the years its IT systems developed—often independent of array of information systems and clinical applications as its IT
each other, based on the needs of 40 care centers and 6,000 phy- system developed. Subsequently, physicians, staff and commu-
sicians—slowly outpacing performance demands and storage nity caregivers often had to use multiple logins for multiple
capacity. Better performance was required and the IT staff systems and manually aggregate information to draw a com-
needed more visibility into system health and operations for plete patient history.
more proactive management.
“Hospital staff would either print screens of data or—more
This hospital sought a comprehensive enterprise management likely—write it on yellow sticky notes,” says Eric Leader,
solution, and IBM responded. Within six months, a deeper view CHW’s chief technology architect.
into the technology environment was in place, monitoring the
network, systems and storage and enabling better access for This was an excellent example of why organizations are turning
management and troubleshooting. The next phase of the plan to portals for a single view of multiple information sources.
includes business management processes and analytics for per- CHW chose a two-part method of using one team to create and
formance measurement. migrate applications and another to build SOA wrappers to
enable existing applications to flow smoothly into the new por-
Smarter business outcomes: tal. Advanced healthcare-specific capabilities were applied by
• Provides better visibility into the system for more precise way of an Internet standards-based, JSR 168-compliant portal
troubleshooting and faster detection of potential problems framework.
before outages occur.
• Lowers failure rates and provides faster resolution The result is an intuitive, secure, HIPAA-compliant interface
resulting in greater customer satisfaction and reduced staff that requires a single login, whether accessed internally or by an
involvement. authorized community partner. Users are enjoying major
reductions in both the steps needed to access critical data and
Key technologies: the time physicians spend on the system.
• IBM System x
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring Smarter business outcomes:
• IBM Tivoli Netcool • Improves patient care by decreasing time to access clinical
• IBM Tivoli Omnibus information, saving some physicians up to three hours per
• IBM Tivoli TotalStorage Productivity Center day.
• Simplifies HIPAA compliance and reporting through
comprehensive usage tracking and logging.
• Enables secure remote access to healthcare information.

Key technologies:
IBM WebSphere Portal
IBM WebSphere Portal Enable
Carefx Fusionfx


Clinical integration and interoperability: Why IBM
• Facilitates the integration, exchange, and sharing of IBM’s deep industry expertise provides the foundation for solv-
information across a healthcare organization, be it multiple ing the most complex problems in healthcare. The leader in
systems within a single hospital or an integrated delivery working with and transforming healthcare provider organiza-
network. tions through service oriented architecture (SOA) and
• Enables secure access to clinical systems and handling of information management, IBM employs dedicated technology
transactions based on HIPAA and HL7 standards, resulting research professionals, including the largest clinical consulting
in time and cost savings. staff in the United States. With its long-term commitment to
industry standards, IBM has developed proven clinical trans-
Case study: Trillium Health Centre formation and health analytics methodology and global
Trillium Health Centre thought patients deserved a better delivery capabilities.
look. Hosting many disciplines, including an innovative cardiac
program and North America’s largest free-standing day sur-
For more information
gery facilities, this Canadian healthcare organization wanted to
To learn more about the IBM Health Integration Framework,
overhaul its patients’ access to records and pertinent applica-
contact your IBM representative or visit:
tions and give them greater control over their healthcare
information.
ibm.com/software/industry/healthcare/

IBM is leading eight healthcare-related technology companies
to help Trillium integrate its patient data across its systems,
enabling patients to manage their own health records and
scheduling. This streamlined process will enable patient
records to reach from hospitals and doctors’ offices to special-
ists and healthcare agencies—for instant and secure access as
needed.

With the potential to transform healthcare delivery, Trillium’s
THINK initiative can increase productivity and remove infor-
mational barriers to necessary data as patients move through
the healthcare system.

Smarter business outcomes:
• Provides patients, clinicians and staff with a constant, fully
integrated knowledge and learning system.
• Enhances the overall quality and safety of patient care and
improves patient health outcomes.
• Gives patients visibility into, and control over, their own
health records.

Key technologies:
IBM Cognos BI
IBM Global Technology Services
IBM Mobility and Wireless Services: Network Consulting

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010
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Produced in the United States of America
February 2010
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Healthcare Information Technology: IBM Health Integration Framework

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