A Little Imagineering at NYP

This last week while most of our industry was fighting the good fight through the snow at HIMMS in Chicago, I was taking a break with my family in the sunny climes of - no surprise to anybody who knows me at all - Disneyland, USA. Despite my daughter’s cold and heavy spring break crowds, Lara’s FastPass skills were in mid-season form, Club 33 was a special treat, I got Roz to talk to me in the Monsters, Inc. ride, and all up we had a great time.

One thing that was really cool was our visit to Blue Sky Cellar, a preview center for the changes that Imagineering is making to California Adventure over the next few years. To me, the stuff that goes into creating park experiences like Peter Pan, Midway Mania and Indiana Jones is simply incredible. Imagination is great - translating those ideas on a 2D movie screen is even better - but being able to render them as experiences in real space is just mind-boggling. Executing on great vision within all the constraints of the real world - that is special.

Back in HSG-land, the two big pieces of news were the release of Amalga UIS 2009 (way to go guys!) and the launch of New York Presbyterian’s mynyp.org - a patient portal that combines HealthVault and Amalga to deliver a compelling showcase of what world-class service from a hospital is going to look like over the coming years. NYP is leading the way, and there have already been some great write-ups, particular in the New York Times and on the Chilmark blog.

We’ve talked about this kind of connectivity for a long time now. I’ve personally spent a good part of the last two years painting the vision of what could be -our team has spent that time building the infrastructure and tools that can help bring that vision to life. But the launch of mynyp.org is an enormous leap forward — NYP has now rendered those ideas in real space and for real patients. The marketing ramp is conservative, but the site is open to everyone. If you get treated at NYP tomorrow, you can go home, create an account at mynyp.org and receive a detailed summary of your visit: discharge notes, medications prescribed, labs performed, images taken. All electronic and digitally signed, ready to share with your specialists, primary care doctors and family members.

I need to settle down here before I get too excited. The point is — this is awesome, and it’s really starting to happen. And what we have done with NYP, we will replicate and with others. We are going to have a real impact on the quality and continuity of care. “Meaningful use” folks, are you listening?

Later this weekend I’m going to post again - with some more technical detail about how HealthVault and Amalga are powering mynyp.org under the covers. In particular I’m going to talk about NYP’s “data asset” - a term that only an engineer could love, but the concept that makes it all come together. Stay tuned.