Lineup Announced for AAMI-FDA Interoperability Summit

Leaders in health information technology (IT), both in and outside the government, will be among the speakers at the AAMI-U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Interoperability Summit Oct. 2-3 in Herndon, VA, outside of Washington, D.C.

A diverse group of  stakeholders—including clinicians, manufacturers, academics, regulators, and healthcare technology management professionals—are expected to gather at the summit to delve into the challenges surrounding interoperability, and identify top priorities for improving device integration and enhancing patient safety.

“The patient safety issues around interoperability with medical devices are enormously complex, because now we are truly talking about system safety,” says AAMI President Mary Logan. “The summit creates a unique opportunity for the healthcare community to get this right on the front end.”

The keynote speaker is David Classen, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Classen was a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that published a pivotal report on how stronger federal oversight is needed for health IT.

There are two speakers from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology: David Muntz, principal deputy national coordinator, and Jacob Reider, MD, chief medical officer.

Nancy Leveson, a renowned system and software safety expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, is also scheduled to speak.

Logan says the summit comes at a “very important time in the implementation of health IT. The IOM report on health IT safety makes it clear that patient safety should have a much higher priority. Congress has mandated that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services develop a plan for regulating it.”

Issues such as design considerations, research gaps, and the regulatory environment as it relates to wireless connectivity are expected to be discussed at the summit.

Thirteen organizations have signed on to support the summit, including The Joint Commission, the Health Information and Management Systems Society, the American Society for Healthcare Engineering, and Underwriters Laboratories.

For additional information on the summit, including registration, click here.

AAMI, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1967. It is a diverse community of nearly 7,000 healthcare technology professionals united by one important mission—supporting the healthcare community in the development, management, and use of safe and effective medical technology.