NIST Renews Award To South Carolina Research Authority For Advanced Healthcare Information Technology

The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced that it will renew a multiyear research award under the Advanced Technology Program to an industry joint venture led by the South Carolina Research Authority (Charleston, S.C.) And the HOST Consortium to develop the information technology to capture, integrate and disseminate the many types of geographically distributed healthcare information in a secure, comprehensive and simple information management environment, with the goal of opening a way to cost-effective, community-wide, collaborative healthcare.

The NIST award renewal is for $5,371,645. The three-year project, begun in 1995, is projected to receive a total of approximately $19,167,000 in ATP funding, matched by approximately $19,903,000 in industry funding. Other members of the joint venture include Advanced Radiology (Towson, Md.); Bellsouth Telecommunications (Birmingham, Ala.); Charleston Area Medical Center, Inc. (Charleston, W.Va.); Connecticut Healthcare Research and Education (Wallingford, Conn.); General Electric Corporate R & D (Niscayuna, N.Y.); Shared Medical Systems Corporation (Malvern, Pa.); Technology 2020 (Oak Ridge, Tenn.); the University of Florida at Gainesville, Department of Anesthesiology (Gainesville, Fla.); and the University of Maryland at Baltimore, Diagnostic & Radiology (Baltimore, Md.).

Advanced Technology Program awards are designed to help industry pursue risky, challenging technologies that have the potential for a big pay-off for the nation’s economy. ATP projects focus on enabling technologies that will create opportunities for new, world-class products, services and industrial processes, benefiting not just the ATP participants but other companies and industries—and ultimately consumers and taxpayers. The ATP’s cost-shared funding enables industry to pursue promising technologies that otherwise would be ignored or developed too slowly to compete in rapidly changing world markets.

Detailed information on this project, Healthcare Information Technology Enabling Community Care, is provided below.

Healthcare Information Technology Enabling Community Care

HITECC, a joint project conceived by the HOST (Healthcare Open Systems and Trials) consortium and led by the South Carolina Research Authority, is developing capabilities necessary to establish the community-wide computerized information sharing essential to reducing healthcare costs and inefficiencies. This extensive partnership, including industry, clinical facilities, universities and national laboratories, combines expertise in healthcare, communications, and information technologies to exploit technologies that will transform fragmented healthcare data into an integrated, community-wide computerized information resource. HITECC, by giving healthcare providers secure and simple access to this information, will allow a fundamental change from episodic treatment to individualized managed healthcare. To realize this goal, the team will focus on three technology capabilities: (1) Integrated Multi-Media Function will provide integrated access and management of the different kinds of data in an affordable and user-friendly manner; (2) Community-Wide Secure Information Sharing will provide the technology to effectively balance privacy and confidentiality of personal information with easy access by legitimate healthcare providers; and (3) Collaborative Computing addresses the need for reliable and cost-effective transmission of high-resolution, high-fidelity medical imagery across existing communication lines. These three capabilities will establish the foundation for providing higher quality healthcare to a broader number of people at a lower overall cost. Other members of the consortium include Advanced Radiology (Towson, MD), BellSouth Telecommunications (Atlanta, GA), Charleston Area Medical Center, Inc. (Charleston, WV), Connecticut Healthcare Research and Education (Wallingford, CT), General Electric (Schenectady, NY), Shared Medical Systems Corporation (Malvern, PA), Technology 2020 (Oak Ridge, TN), University of Florida (Gainesville, FL), and the University of Maryland at Baltimore Medical Center (Baltimore, MD).

South Carolina Research Authority
Charleston, SC

Technologies: Healthcare information systems

Project length: 3 years

ATP funds: $19,167 K

Cost-shared funds (est.): $19,903 K

Total project funds (est.): $39,070 K

Contact: Jack Corley, (803) 760-3792, corley [at] scra.org (corley[at]scra[dot]org)