Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), a group promoting health IT interoperability, has tapped the College of American Pathologists (CAP) to lead an effort to extend the interoperability of medical laboratory devices.
CAP, which focuses on pathology and laboratory medicine, includes a division devoted to pursuing semantic interoperability for electronic health records (EHRs) and other applications.
CAP's work includes the development of SNOMED Clinical Terms. Standard of this kind aim to promote semantic interoperability, which seeks to ease the exchange of data among computers that would otherwise trip up on differing clinical terms.
IHE identified next-generation laboratory device automation as one issue the laboratory project will address in 2010-2011.
Cory Hall, director, diagnostic intelligence and health IT projects at CAP, said the next area of device integration will focus on improving ways devices communicate with lab information systems, which in turn release test results to inpatient or ambulatory EHRs and the requesting doctor.
Hall said lab devices have traditionally employed unique, vendor-specific communications protocols. "The work that is going to be done in the ... current work year is to help standardize the way in which those devices communicate," he noted.
IHE's sponsors include the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the Radiological Society of North America, and the American College of Cardiology (ACC)
