C4MI-HSPC Collaboration: The Journey

The first HSPC General meeting I attended was in the spring of 2014 in Scottsdale, Arizona .... my home state! *   The HL7 Working Group Meetings were at the same time over at the Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, and Dr. Stan Huff and Oscar Diaz invited me to come over to check out the meetings.  So Friday morning I went and ... yikes!   There were a lot of people there, and it was clear that this organization was different than the others that i had participated in - it was doing "real work" - driving toward establishing a broad community that could operationalize much of this open standards-based, SOA healthcare technology, and in a way that would actually impact the daily lives of patients and how clinicians provide care.  Fantastic!

Interestingly, the Center for Medical Interoperability (C4MI) had just formed the preceding August 2013 - having been spun out of the West Health Institute, located in San Diego ... America's Finest City! - and as I learned more about the HSPC, it was clear that these two organizations had far more in common than any differences.  [Note: Read the C4MI Info page and you will quickly see the alignment!]

Since that time, I have had the opportunity to participate in almost all of the HSPC meetings, with an eye toward how the two organizations could form a closer working relationship - joining forces around shared passions and objectives to give control of infrastructure and interoperable solutions back to care providers and to effect fundamental change in the healthcare informatics and information technology industry.  

Early 2015, Intermountain Healthcare also joined the C4MI and Dr. Huff joined its newly formed Technical Advisory Council (TAC), which is comprised of other healthcare provider CTO / CIO / CMIO participants from member organizations.  Stan quickly put both CIMI and HSPC engagement on the C4MI technical program map, resulting in the continued interest of C4MI member organizations, including HCA, CHS, Ascension, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Northwestern, Robert Wood Johnson, and others.

Given this backdrop, the creation of this Confluence space, then, represents a milestone along the journey of these two organizations, and we am confident that great things lay ahead for both!

*Note:  Just to be clear, I am a Wildcat from Tucson ... so please do not hold it against me if I am sometimes challenged by the relative proximity to ASU when I am in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area!