Cerner previews its new products and plans for HIMSS22

While electronic health record giant Cerner has been in the spotlight of late because of its pending acquisition by Oracle, that is not what the health IT company will be highlighting in the exhibit hall of the upcoming HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, March 14-18.

Interoperability, organ donation technologies, public health reporting of infectious diseases, the caregiver experience, care coordination and risk arrangements, and data usability – these are the subjects and technologies that Cerner will emphasize at HIMSS22, according to Sam Lambson, vice president of interoperability at Cerner.

Healthcare IT News interviewed Lambson to get an advance look at what Cerner will be up to at healthcare information technology’s biggest gathering.

Q. What is a new product or update you will be debuting or an important area of focus for you at HIMSS22, and how do you expect it to help healthcare provider organizations?

A. One key area we’ll focus on at HIMSS22 is how we’re enabling interoperability for our clients. We’ll showcase our Seamless Exchange solution, which leverages FHIR standards to pull and push data into EHR systems and moves us beyond connectivity to true usability of clinical data.

It brings external and internal patient data together in a new intuitive side-by-side comparison view, and will help prevent unnecessary data reconciliation and increase the adoption of outside information by minimizing duplicate data. I believe Seamless Exchange is one of the most sophisticated applications of FHIR in the market today.

We’ll also highlight other new solutions to help automate our clients’ environments – for example, streamlining organ donation and transplant notifications through our collaboration with Transplant Connect.

The automation helps increase donor and recipient matches, lessen missed opportunities for timely donation, and reduce the number of hours caregivers manually spend locating a match. This connection is especially critical during the COVID-19 pandemic as intensive care units are overburdened.

The need for good donors is significant in the U.S., according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Every nine minutes, a person is added to the transplant waiting list – more than 106,000 adults and children are currently on the list. Seventeen people die each day waiting for an organ transplant.

Also, automating and simplifying public health reporting of infectious diseases by caregivers through Cerner’s Electronic Case Reporting (eCR) solution.

In 2021, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) named Cerner the hospital category winner of its 2021 eCR Now COVID-19 FHIR App Challenge for its public health eCR solution. The solution automates a previously burdensome reporting process, enabling caregivers more time to deliver patient care.

Q. What will be the gist of your main message you will be delivering throughout the conference and exhibition?

A. Cerner’s overarching theme at HIMSS focuses on enhancing patient care and the caregiver experience, ultimately helping to improve health outcomes across our global community. Our booths and speaking sessions will highlight several products and solutions as well as stories from caregivers at hospitals and health systems who have benefited from Cerner’s collaboration and technology.

Attendees will learn how Cerner is helping to create a world in which everyone thrives, from diverse health systems down to a single patient.

Enabling interoperability is one critical element to enhancing the patient and caregiver experience. Cerner will spotlight how we are supporting an ecosystem of innovation through robust interoperability.

As a long-time advocate for interoperability standards, we’re not only making information securely available in unprecedented ways for our clients and their affiliates, but we are helping our clients take advantage of these new capabilities in outside systems – automating previously cumbersome or manual processes.

Q. Where do you see EHRs and related technologies evolving in 2022? What should healthcare provider CIOs and other health IT leaders keep their eyes on?

A. The biggest evolution will come in care coordination as healthcare providers take on more risk arrangements with their payers. Having timely clinical and claims data exchanged between organizations is key to successfully managing the care and expense of a population.

CIOs should recognize that these traditionally manual processes buried in HIM departments will be solved with scaled data exchange because the ubiquity of standards-based exchange and FHIR resources makes new levels of automation and control possible.

Another key focus I’d expect to see in 2022 is on data usability. Time and time again we hear from clients and the industry about the need to move from connectivity to usability of data. While different systems need to be able to exchange information, it is more critical for the data to be available in a format that makes sense to the caregiver.

Bringing together external and internal patient data into a single longitudinal patient record and presenting in a simplified workflow can reduce the burden on caregivers while providing a holistic view of each patient’s care history.

The goal is to eliminate duplicate data and provide a single record of problems, allergies, medications, immunizations, procedures, labs, documents and vitals. Plus, having access to comprehensive and easy-to-understand data can help reduce EHR-related burnout and enable caregivers to spend more time providing informed patient care.

Cerner is in Booth 3041 at HIMSS22 in Orlando.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.