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Computer Science
Healthcare Informatics
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The healthcare market is in a great state of change, driven by consumer pressure, regulatory pressure, governmental pressure and the availability of vast new sources of healthcare data at the molecular level. Major initiatives to improve healthcare through the use of IT can be found around the world, including the launch of a National Health Infrastructure Initiative (NHII) in the US in May 2004 - with the goal of providing an electronic health record for every American within the next decade. The major challenge to the market is to significantly improve the quality and success rate of healthcare delivery while decreasing costs to patients and payers and improving the overall positive experiences of consumers and providers.
To address these issues IBM Research has launched the HII project involving scientists around the globe. The state of a national healthcare infrastructure can be vastly improved through better management of data and an improved understanding of how healthcare services are delivered. In 2005 we will demonstrate a prototype IBM Healthcare Information Infrastructure that can support Regional Healthcare information Organizations (RHIO) and is scaleable up to a national system. This technology will support cross-institutional and longitudinal healthcare and health records. The core of the platform derives from IBM’s vision for an Aligned Clinical Environment (ACE). The HII prototype will be instantiated in Almaden, Haifa, and Rochester MN. It will bind together IBM Research efforts across the Division and showcase innovative new technologies and new healthcare services.
We are also exploring new business models for investment and deployment of
a future NHII, including the concept of Independent Health Record Banks (IHRBs). IHRBs are likely to evolve along with the national
infrastructure and will make possible new services including personalized medicine. Customer interaction will better frame research priorities to understand, foresee, meet and adapt to customer requirements.
A modern Health Information Infrastructure will also transform public health information allowing CDC and state and local departments of public health to better understand the spatial and time evolution of infectious disease. As part of the HII project we have also developed a new public health toolkit that will allow such agencies to base plans and forecasts on well grounded scientific models for infectious and
chronic disease.
Our current interests are: Healthcare Privacy, Interoperability and Multimodal Analysis.
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Dr. Bill Cody
Senior Manager, Healthcare Informatics |
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