Cisco-UCSF Team Seeks to Launch Health IT System Interoperability Tool; Michael Blum Comments

Cisco and the University of California San Francisco have teamed up to develop a platform designed to achieve interoperability among health information technology systems.

UCSF said Wednesday it will set up a center at the university’s Mission Bay campus to collaborate with Cisco and other health technology experts to develop and test the interoperability tool across health IT systems, software and devices.

Cisco will share its digital business and analytics tools with the university to develop and roll out applications that seek to address challenges to health IT interoperability.

“The lack of complete information on our patients leads to poor, costly care, delays in diagnosis or treatment and dissatisfied patients – all due to health information systems that cannot communicate with one another,” said Michael Blum, associate vice chancellor for informatics at UCSF and director of the UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation.

Cisco and UCSF will conduct pilot tests of the platform at UCSF Medical Center before they deploy the technology to other medical facilities in the university’s health system.