The Gift of Innovation from Within

The health information technology (health IT) sector received an important gift on Sept. 29. In fact, we received two important gifts. Both these gifts came from Kaiser Permanente. And both stemmed from Kaiser's long-time investment and innovation in health IT adoption and use.

At a ceremony at HHS headquarters this week, Kaiser donated its Convergent Medical Terminology (CMT) for open availability to any HIT developer. The technology enables clinicians to use the terms that are familiar to them in diagnosis and treatment. CMT acts like a simultaneous translator in several directions. For clinicians, it translates clinical language they use to communicate with colleagues into the technical terms that electronic health records (EHRs) use to communicate with other records. For patients, it takes those underlying technical terms and makes them understandable to lay persons. And, it can translate clinicians' terminology directly into lay language as well. It also facilitates the useability of EHRs and the sharing of health information among clinicians and patients. This will spur adoption and meaningful use of EHRs. CMT also will reduce current duplicative efforts - by many vendors and health care organizations - to develop and link clinician and patient-friendly terminology to underlying standards. Finally, in support of future innovation, it gives smaller EHR vendors and clinician practices that lack the resources to support vocabulary development access to high-quality clinician- and patient-friendly terminology.