Meeting Announcement: “Introduction to the Clinical Groupware Collaborative”

by Steve Adams, CEO, RMD Networks and Acting President, Clinical Groupware Collaborative  

I’m writing to extend a warm personal invitation to learn more about the Clinical Groupware Collaborative (CGC).  To-date, purely through word-of-mouth over 40 companies have expressed interest in the CGC, and we expect that you’ll be hearing a lot more about us over the coming months.

Our meeting will take place next Tuesday, September 22, 6 PM in conjunction with The Forum 09, the annual meeting of DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance.  More details are provided at the bottom of this post.

I’ll address a few questions that might be on your mind.

Q. What is Clinical Groupware? 

A. Clinical Groupware is a new and evolving model for the development and deployment of health IT platforms and applications, the characteristics of which include use of the Internet and the Web as a platform, explicit design for health data exchange and online communication among providers and patients/consumers, a modular or component architecture upon which applications can be aggregated to meet specific clinical and workflow tasks; while allowing interface standards and protocols for data exchange to emerge in a market-driven manner. Clinical Groupware applications can be distributed as software-as-as-service, and are intended to support today’s mobile health care environment by supplying the right information, at the right time and the right place.

Advocates of the Clinical Groupware approach are not limited to software developers and technologists, but also include practicing physicians, executives and managers from health care provider organizations and care management companies, patient advocates, and leaders in life sciences, home monitoring, and medical device manufacturing firms.

Q. What is the Clinical Groupware Collaborative?

A. What unites the members of this collaborative is a shared desire to see the growth in the acquisition and use of affordable, easy-to-use, and interoperable EHR technology, especially among the very large group of “non-consumers” who have found legacy EMRs cumbersome, expensive, and technically challenging to use.

The CGC is in a formative stage. We are working to be formally incorporated before the end of 2009

Members of the initial “Working Group” for the CGC are:

• Steve Adams — RMD Networks (Founder and Acting President)
• Bill Crounse, MD — Microsoft
• Michael Fleming, MD — Amedisys
• John Haughton MD, MS — DocSite
• David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA — American Academy of Family Physicians (Founder and Acting Chair)
• Vince Kuraitis — Better Health Technologies
• Tracey Moorhead – DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance
• Gordon Norman MD, MBA — Alere
• Martin Pellinat — VisionTree
• Ravi Sharma — 4Medica

 Meeting Details

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

6:00 to 7:30 PM

The Forum 09 DMAA Conference Hotel — Hilton San Diego Bayfront, 1 Park Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92101; Room Aqua 304

Agenda

6:00 — 6:30 Hors d’euvres

6:30 — 7:30 “Introduction to the Clinical Groupware Collaborative” + Discussion/Q&A

• Steve Adams, CEO, RMD
• John Haughton, MD, MS; CEO
• Ravi Sharma, CEO, 4Medica
• Martin Pellinat, CEO, VisionTree  
• Vince Kuraitis, Principal, Better Health Technologies will act as moderator.

 If you can’t attend but would still like more information about the CGC, please email me at sadams@rmdnetworks.com .

 We look forward to seeing you there!