Better Medicine Through TechnologyBetter Medicine Through Technology

London Calling

LONDON CALLING
When the folks at UPMC say they want to export technical and clinical expertise beyond western Pennsylvania, they're not talking about selling to companies in Ohio. Cancer centers in Ireland use advanced radiation and imaging technology developed at UPMC. The center is also talking with health care providers in the United Kingdom, which is undergoing its own government-mandated tech transformation. In mid-November, representatives from Newcastle Primary Care Trust, a regional health provider in the United Kingdom, visited with Drawbaugh's team to evaluate how UPMC technology capabilities might work for their clinicians.

Back in the States, some of UPMC's joint tech endeavors are focused on improving the business side of health care. In January, UPMC announced a deal with Combinet, a decision support software vendor that sells technology co-created with Carnegie Mellon. They launched a company, CombineMed, that provides computerized sourcing services to health care organizations. CombineMed's "expressive bidding" platform lets suppliers offer complex bids that might include multiple proposals or specific constraints, such as rebates or payment terms. System tools let buyers analyze those bids, thus helping health care providers optimize their supply chains, Drawbaugh says.

In CombineMed's first event earlier this year, UPMC and two other hospitals purchased more than $400 million in supplies from about 100 companies that bid about 40,000 items. Cumulatively, the health care providers saved about 8%--or $32 million--on their purchases, Drawbaugh says. A second event is planned for early next year.

As patient care evolves to providing clinicians with access to integrated data, voice, and video information, Drawbaugh anticipates that the use of virtualization software, which helps cut hardware costs and improve performance, will play an increasingly critical role. As part of its server consolidation, UPMC is using VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 virtualization software to move applications onto IBM System x3950 eight-way servers running ESX, says Paul Sikora, UPMC's VP of IT transformation. Virtualization let UPMC upgrade an imaging management system for about $250,000, using only 23 servers; one vendor had proposed using 43 servers at a cost of $523,000. "It's like quadrupling the gas mileage in your car," Sikora says.

And any of UPMC's IT initiatives that involve patient data must take into consideration one important aspect--the patient. From the patient's viewpoint, "that's my data," Drawbaugh says. For UPMC, that means a Web site that now lets about 1,000 patients access their data, like medication information, diagnosis, and treatments. By February, that information will be available to about 1 million of UPMC's health plan members, he says.

CHANGE AGENTS
Drawbaugh is quick to credit the IT organization's highly supportive 953 professionals, the biomedical engineering staff of 180, the 15 executives who report to him--including eight business-unit CIOs--and especially UPMC's corporate leadership team, most notably CEO Romoff. "I've served on boards where they'll spend two years discussing ROI," Drawbaugh says. But with Romoff, "that takes about 10 minutes. He has a vision of where we want to see the organization go. We believe in execution."

Often, the longer someone works in one place, the easier it is to get complacent and resist change. Not so for Drawbaugh and his team.

Drawbaugh, who's 47 years old, began his career in 1983, as director of biomedical engineering at Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh. He was named CIO there in 1990, then became CIO at UPMC when it acquired Shadyside in 1996. "I never thought I'd be in the same place of employment for 23 years," he says. But that longevity has given Drawbaugh an astute understanding of the organization's evolving needs, and it's cultivated trust and sweat equity, including a close working relationship with Romoff, who's been at UPMC for 30 years.

Of his 15 direct reports, nine have been with UPMC for 15 years or more. On the clinical side, Drawbaugh works closely with chief medical officer Loren Roth, a 30-year UPMC veteran. "We pick up the phone every day, on weekends, whenever," he says. "There's a level of collaboration that allows you to get things done."

Having a strong, smart team he can count on lets Drawbaugh engage in strategic thinking, to explore those key partnerships. That's where a CIO should be spending his or her time, he says: "If your network's not up, that's where you'll be spending your time instead."

While Drawbaugh spends much of his time looking ahead, his inspiration to pursue a career in health care technology came from a painful experience as a 6-year-old, when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dealing with that situation along with his father, a mechanical engineer, sparked young Drawbaugh's fascination with health and medical devices. "My motivation to get in health care was to affect people's lives," he says.

The type of data physicians will have access to over the next five years will be much more complex and comprehensive than it is now. Today, we think of electronic medical records as the point-of-care system, Drawbaugh says, but the next several years will see the integration of more sophisticated and extensive medical data, such as DNA and protein-related information.

But providing physicians with mountains of electronic data instead of reams of paper reports won't help patients if there aren't decision support tools that help clinicians quickly gather all the most pertinent pieces of an individual's health history, as well as the latest relevant research. Those tools are part of Drawbaugh's ultimate goal, and for very personal reasons.

"When my mother was treated for breast cancer, there was a 17-year period between scientific research that said one treatment was superior and the time the research was put into practice," he says. "The time frame is too long." The work he's doing on health care IT is meant to help close that gap, as quickly as possible. "I'd like to be there in five years."

That can-do approach is what makes Drawbaugh an exemplary IT leader, one who deserves to be singled out. Much more of that will be needed to heal this country's ailing health care industry.