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MEDICAL PRIVACY
Instead of a National Patient ID Number...
Press Release from Sequoia Software
October 24, 1997
Columbia, Md. USA
Sequoia Software Chosen to Link U.S.
Patient Records
The new nationwide index could save lives, prevent fraud, and
lower costs Columbia, Md.-based Sequoia Software Corporation
earlier this month won a multi-million dollar federal research and
development grant to develop a national Master Patient Index (MPI)
that would link patient records throughout the country.
The Index will correlate and cross-reference computerized
patient records from different health care organizations while
matching key identifiers with a high degree of accuracy, all
without the need for attendant human operators. Such a system
could save lives by providing immediate access to summary medical
records in emergencies, according to company officials. In
addition, it could enhance detection of fraud in Medicare and
Medicaid programs, reduce the costly duplication of medical tests,
and increase provider productivity.
The grant, awarded to Sequoia Software
by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), provides cost-sharing funding and
is given to a winner of the Department-sponsored Advanced
Technology Program competition in the category of "Information
Infrastructure for Healthcare."
The goal of the research and development endeavor is to form
an MPI for "Massively Distributed Medical Records System" across a
national computer backbone. The need for such a system has been
increasing dramatically over the last few years due to
consolidations and collaborations between health care providers.
According to NIST program officials, "the awardprogram
concentrates resources on key technical barriers and business
challenges in specific technologies judged by the industry to
offer the potential for major economic benefits to the nation."
Currently, the electronic flow, interchange and use of patient
medical records between health care organizations, and, in many
cases, within large health care institutions, is hampered and
often impossible. Until now, there has been no common indexing to
correlate and cross-reference patient identifiers such as name,
birthday and Social Security number while accurately and
automatically matching patient records.This MPI will provide the
link for these records.
The proposed Master Patient Index could also reduce paperwork,
which accounts for a substantial portion of U.S. health care
costs. Department of Commerce support for the Sequoia Software
proposal will accelerate development of the MPI and potentially
save billions of dollars. John
Carpenter, worldwide healthcare manager for the Microsoft
Corporation, said, "Sequoia has become a very successful
Healthcare SolutionsProviders with Microsoft® Windows NT®
operating system and the SQL Serverúdatabase management system. As
one of our Industry Solution Award winners for 1997, we are
confident that Sequoia's MPI project will bring real value to both
health care organizations and independent software vendors
marketing products to the health care industry."
About Sequoia Software Sequoia Software is a healthcare
transaction server developer. Healthcare transaction servers are a
set of "back-office" technology services for developing,
maintaining, transferring and accessing records generated by
disparate applications in a distributed, heterogeneous health care
delivery network. These transaction servers are available for use
by health care organizations as their technical foundation, or can
be embedded as an OEM product in vendor applications.
Sequoia's product is Medstarú, an SGML/XML-based solution for
summary patient records and health care transaction management.
SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language) and XML (Extensible
Mark-up Language) are vendor neutral, formal, international
standards for information interchange that enable the seamless
flow of data across different technology platforms throughout
widely-spread networks.
Medstar recently earned top honors from a panel of industry
experts with Microsoft's 1997 Industry Solution Award in the
Managed Care-Clinical/Patient Information category. Sequoia's
products also helped Kaiser Permanente win the 1997 Computer-based
Patient Record Institute's (CPRI) Nicholas Davies Award of
Excellence in computerized patient record systems.
For More Information Information about Sequoia Software
Corporation and white papers on Medstar can be obtained through
Sequoia Software's corporate
website
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Citizens' Council on Health Care
1954 University Avenue West, Suite 8, St. Paul, MN 55104
Phone: 651.646.8935 / Fax: 651.646.0100, e-mail
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