Interviewed by Susan Sharer, EVP, FedHealthIT
Catching up with Ron Sullivan, VP/ GM InterSystems Public Sector recently, we heard about the work the company is doing within the VA, DoD, and the Indian Health Service, and how the company’s products and services support growing interoperability.
What are the top 2 Federal Health Agencies you support?
Much of our work is with the VA, DoD and with Indian Health. We are privileged to be providing the underlying technology for each that contributes in a major way to their health information systems. These Federal Agencies aren’t different from commercial health in the ways they need to share information, from a clinical side and the business side to support the entire user experience.
What type of technology products are you providing and delivering?
InterSystems is unique because we deliver service along with our product. Our technical people, our systems engineers, partner with systems integrators who implement, build out, and create unique development. Focused on ensuring that what we provide the customer is best, we help other organizations provide better service. This may mean working closely with them on a first effort, then sitting back to offer counsel and guidance from a distance. In this way, we are helping build an army of InterSystems-capable implementers out of various organizations who can then go out and better serve their customers.
Understanding that Federal organizations are built to deliver Healthcare, not deliver software, and that an engine building for many organizations is more effective, our product is available on SEWP (Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement).
What trends do you see/ where is the market going?
There is a growing realization that building on your own is not the best solution. There is a lot of industry money that goes into building back end solutions that many can benefit from and there is more of a tendency to utilize this. Federal organizations are built to deliver Healthcare, not deliver solutions, and when you have an engine that can build for hundreds of users, there is far more benefit available than building for one.
We’re seeing technological improvements across the industry, and the market is moving to take advantage of that enhanced technology, to looking at an entire enterprise being connected amongst all systems. The term that has evolved is “digital information platform,”—in the case of VA, the digital Veteran platform, and it describes that focus on bringing something into an enterprise that can ride on an existing digital platform and be totally connected. This is all about creating the ability to move data from silos of systems, no matter what system it may exist on. Think about a system set up for radiographic images and moving those images into health records or into a core system so people can get the information they need, no matter what they’re dialed into.
One critical aspect is the ability to reach into the disability system, to understand what it is, so Veterans, for instance, can get full credit for any disability they have incurred. The advances with respect to moving this data are huge and are growing in what we might call dog years – one or two years compared with the seven or more it may have taken previously.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]Getting access to any and all data and making it useful is the next evolution in business transformation.[/su_pullquote]That ability to move away from silos towards enterprise, to get health and business information into a centralized architecture that is easy to scale is going to be key. When we talk about the Cloud, this is really what it’s all about – the ability to get bandwidth on demand, to increase it without additional hardware acquisition, and then to be able to dump it when it isn’t needed. This is where we need to be moving.
What advice would you give the system integrators?
It’s critical to work to be a facilitator and collaborator. As systems integrators, the focus should be on bringing solution packages together, making it easy to access systems without huge outlays in hardware or software. There are solutions coming from all elements of industry that we need to tap into. Ultimately, we need to find ways to deliver faster, better, and cheaper.
It was once about a new component coming in. Now, it’s about looking at the entire enterprise connected between all the various systems, and about saving Government time and investment and leveraging capabilities wherever they exist to drive that. A system that is going to last for 20 years or more will need to be enhanced over time to satisfy the user population and Government can’t make that kind of investment every few years. We have to bring expenses down by allowing components to come in and go out, by looking at the enterprise needs and how things fit.
Those who are successful at cooperation when working together, collaboration, those who can lead teams, will be instrumental.
About InterSystems: InterSystems work is based on a core platform on which many Federal Agencies run their systems and additional capability for interoperability that has developed over the years. This interoperability has made the platform more engageable, providing Agencies with better access to data, the ability to move data between platforms, and ultimately, the ability to provide the clinician with as much point-of-service data as possible to support decision making.
Although we do work in a few verticals, for more than 30 years a major focus of the company has been in Healthcare. Our core platform is a data-based development tool that allows for adaptations to meet the uniqueness and nuances of the Federal space, including adjustments based on direction from Congress and the unique way Government handles the flow of money in and out. Over the past 10 years we’ve grown in the interoperability space, beginning with an enhanced interface engine that added a more timely and informative delivery of data and information.
Most recently, we announced a new data platform. Known as InterSystems IRIS, it includes all of the critical capabilities for rapidly developing data-intensive and mission-critical applications, including advanced data management, interoperability, transaction processing, and analytics.
