CHICAGO — Following the American Medical Association’s Integrated Health Model Initiative (IHMI) announcement today that will lead to a health care data evolution for improving, organizing and sharing information, several leading organizations affirmed their collaboration and the potential for this ambitious initiative.

William Kassler, MD, deputy chief health officer, IBM Watson Health

"This important and novel initiative aligns with our mission to help health care providers make essential connections and gain confidence in the decisions they make. Participation in this collaborative supports our goal to help providers improve patient outcomes and experience, reduce cost, and enhance physician and care team satisfaction."

Stan Huff, MD, chief medical informatics officer, Intermountain Healthcare

“I am excited about IHMI because it builds on the foundation of interoperability standards that are being created by HL7, LOINC, and SNOMED International. If we persist, that approach will lead to the ability to exchange medical knowledge as executable software rather than as journal articles. If we can do it, it will be a historic evolutionary step for medicine.”

David McCallie, MD, senior vice president for medical informatics, Cerner

"Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the information used to manage a person’s care is a priority for Cerner, so we are happy to support this AMA initiative to improve the semantics of clinical data models. This represents a bold attempt to advance an important aspect of interoperability."

Meighan Girgus, chief marketing and programs officer, American Heart Association

“One of our primary goals is to continue to develop a patient-centered approach to heart and stroke care. This new collaboration will ensure that patients receive the best care throughout their journey by providing a holistic view of a patient’s health data to health care providers along the way. By sharing data, we not only create a better experience for the patient, but, ultimately, better outcomes — more lives saved and an improved quality of life.”

Douglas H. Fridsma, MD, PhD, president and CEO, American Medical Informatics Association

“A proliferation of data in health care has made informatics an essential component to the practice of modern medicine, and AMIA will ensure that IHMI benefits from the latest in informatics science, practice, and education. We are excited to bring our members’ wealth of knowledge to IHMI so that our national investment in digitizing care can lead to improved health outcomes.”

Don Sweete, CEO, SNOMED International

"The IHM initiative complements the approach that SNOMED International embodies regarding continuous learning and collaboration. Committed to the unambiguous exchange of clinical information across all health systems, services and products through terminology, SNOMED International is excited to contribute to IHM’s collaborative community and its pursuit of safe, effective and patient-driven health care.”

Leon Rozenblit, JD, PhD, CEO, Prometheus Research LLC

"Prometheus is excited to serve as an AMA launch collaborator for the Integrated Health Model Initiative (IHMI). We believe it presents an opportunity to dramatically improve the state-of-the-art in representing, exchanging, and using health data. If successful, the IHMI will make a vital difference to our many registry clients pursuing clinical research and healthcare quality improvement, and to anyone seeking to turn health data into an actionable, sustainable, and value-generating resource."

Joe V. Selby, MD, MPH, executive director, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)

“Learning from what we do in the practice of medicine is a fundamental feature of the physician’s role. Efforts like IHMI have the potential to support physicians and their patients in doing just that. PCORI, particularly through our PCORnet initiative, recognizes that real world clinical data, especially when standardized and shared, can generate evidence that will greatly accelerate learning and advance the profession of medicine.”

Blackford Middleton, MD, MPH, MSc, chief informatics & innovation officer, Apervita, Inc.

“The IHMI has the potential to significantly jump start U.S. health care transformation through improved data interoperability and knowledge exchange for clinical decision Support and analytics. Apervita is excited to support and use this technology in practice with its customers.”

Charlie Harp, CEO, Clinical Architecture LLC

“In order to fulfill the promise of Healthcare IT, the systems we use must have good information and be smart enough to leverage that information. If we could provide a high-fidelity picture of the patient, and the best computable knowledge for providers and healthcare organizations, it could have a dramatic and positive effect on healthcare. At Clinical Architecture, our mission is to be a catalyst in the evolution of healthcare IT. We also believe that smart, motivated people earnestly working together can accomplish amazing things. IHMI encompasses both of these principles and we are excited to be a part of it.”

The AMA’s IHMI will bring together the health and technology sectors around a common data model that is missing in health care. IHMI fills the national imperative to pioneer a shared framework for organizing health data, emphasizing patient centric information, and refining data elements to those most predictive of achieving better outcomes. Evolving available health data to depict a complete picture of a patient’s journey from wellness to illness to treatment and beyond allows health care delivery to fully focus on patient outcomes, goals and wellness.

The AMA invites all health care innovators and stakeholders to join the IHMI and contribute their unique expertise to transforming health care. To join IHMI, visit www.ama-assn.org/ihmi for more details.