Governments and healthcare organizations are increasingly advocating the use of information technology to improve the way treatment and information are delivered to patients.

Momentum toward change in the United States has been building considerably over the last year. For example, several provisions in the Medicare prescription drug bill recently approved by Congress and signed by the president strongly encourage electronic prescriptions. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is currently administering a $50 million program designed to demonstrate and evaluate the practical applications of IT in healthcare.

"There is simply no doubt that information technology can improve healthcare quality and patient safety—even save lives—while also addressing some of the cost challenges healthcare providers continue to struggle with," says Janet Marchibroda, CEO of the eHealth Initiative, a nonprofit consortium that promotes the use of technology to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare.

Open Standards in Healthcare

Sun Microsystems works closely with the eHealth Initiative.

"We believe the goals of the eHealth Initiative are directly aligned with our efforts in the healthcare space," says Orlando Portale, global healthcare industry manager at Sun. "In particular, as an advocate for open standards, we believe both organizations should continue to promote adoption of these standards for electronically connecting various health industry constituents such as hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, laboratories, and health insurance. By eliminating the paper shuffle we find in most healthcare organizations, we can reduce costs and improve patient care outcomes."

Sun's involvement with the eHealth Initiative is twofold, Portale explains.

"Sun is involved in helping various health industry policy and standards boards define eHealth strategies and support legislative agenda and incentives for the adoption of information technology in healthcare. We have also published an open standards-based network computing infrastructure blueprint for healthcare called the OpenRx Framework."

OpenRx includes technologies for linking healthcare organizations, and also offers sample model architectures that address requirements for building eHealth solutions such as ePrescriber networks and electronic disease surveillance networks.

"We are encouraged by the recent Medicare prescription drug legislation, because it provides a funding vehicle and policy direction for the adoption of ePrescriber networks," says Portale. "The drafters of the legislation recognized that the single biggest contributor to medication errors is the paper-based physician's prescription pad. We are now working with partners such as NDCHealth to develop the next-generation ePrescriber systems that will be ready when the Medicare legislation goes into effect."

Sun's involvement, say company executives, extends beyond simply selling hardware and software to hospitals.

"Sun has the background, knowledge, and ability to help the healthcare industry transform the way it manages patient information," says Piper Cole, vice president of global public policy at Sun. "We have a point of view for healthcare and a real commitment to help the industry transform.

"We believe that the eHealth Initiative—through its efforts to promote the better use of IT in healthcare and its commitment to interoperability and open standards, openly developed—is on exactly the right path," Cole adds. "This is a path we've run before in other industries. We've learned a lot, and we want to share that learning with the healthcare industry."

For example, Sun foresees incredible opportunities for digitized patient care and distance collaboration, Cole says. But because privacy and security is so essential when it comes to personal health information, it is of paramount importance to ensure that authorized users can be properly identified on any network.

Sun's involvement with and use of specifications created by the Liberty Alliance Project—formed in September 2001 to develop open standards for federated network identity management—makes that sort of collaboration among healthcare workers and agencies possible, while enabling security and privacy.

Looking Toward the Future

Over the next year, the eHealth Initiative plans to expand its support for communities that want to use IT to their advantage.

In December, eHealth launched the Connecting Communities for Better Health, a $3.9 million program in cooperation with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that will provide seed funding to communities that use IT and the electronic exchange of health information to drive improvements in quality, safety, and efficiency.

eHealth is also creating a Connecting Communities for Better Health Resource Center that will provide tools for communities interested in using technology, as well as the stakeholders within those communities—physicians, hospitals, payor organizations, and public health agencies—to help them implement tech solutions and exchange data.

In a recent interview with Health-IT World, Dr. Herbert Pardes, incoming eHealth Initiative board president and president and CEO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said that one key to getting IT buy-in from hospital administrators is to show them how technology is streamlining efforts and improving patient care at other facilities.

"If decision makers go to places that are further along (in technology implementations), they will get a sense of how things work and see (IT's) value," Pardes told Health-IT World. "At New York-Presbyterian, physicians no longer need to write notes (thanks to) our new CPOE system. The benefits are self-evident. For those that are skeptical, they need to visit places that are successfully using technology and become educated."

For its part, Sun is working with the eHealth Initiative to help bring more of technology's self-evident benefits to healthcare.

"Sun Microsystems has been an extremely active member and leader within the eHealth Initiative," says Marchibroda. "The products and services that they deliver are going to be critical to getting us to our vision: an interconnected, electronic healthcare system that gives clinicians the information they need, when they need it to deliver the best healthcare.

"We also envision a system that enables patients to better navigate the healthcare system and their own healthcare. Sun's innovation and leadership are going to help us get there. They have helped to shape our vision and give us the tools we need to begin to make it a reality."