Aside from some small-scale attempts, however, little has been done in the way of forging a cohesive, networked health care system, according to Dr. Grant Savage, Richard Scrushy/HealthSouth Chair and Professor of Health Care Management at UA's Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration.

"There are a number of reasons information technology has not progressed in health care," Savage said. "Cost, competition, politics, privacy - all come to mind. But we have reached the point that consumer complaints about health care delivery practically dictate that we seriously look at how information technology can alleviate some of the problems in health care."

So when a Savage acquaintance from the past contacted him with an idea about health care and information technology, Savage listened. The contact was Leo van der Reis, M.D., whom Savage had known when he taught health care management at Texas Tech University.

Van der Reis, now an adjunct professor in health care at UA, is director of the Quincy Foundation for Medical Research, a charitable trust in San Francisco. The Quincy Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, has been conducting research for the past 10 years on issues of concern to physicians and other health care professionals, particularly the standardization of information technology across health care.

Van der Reis and Savage worked out a plan to transfer the intellectual property of the Quincy Foundation to the healthcare management program at UA, and the publications, records and other material are now stored at the Angelo Bruno Business Library.

Savage said the strength of the University’s management information systems program was a major consideration in planning to locate the Quincy Foundation's intellectual property at UA, as was the strength of the information technology and health care sector in Birmingham.

Savage and van der Reis are developing plans for convening a two-phase conference on the role of information technology in health care in late 2002 and early 2003. The result of the conference would be a comprehensive report on the clinical information and standardization needs of the U.S. health care community.

Current plans call for the conference to have two phases, including an exploratory workshop to establish an agenda and “blue papers” on key issues, followed by the working conference and subsequent “white papers” on relevant issues. "We want to make sure we have every step planned and that the appropriate people have sufficient input," Savage said.

Van der Reis said that he and Savage have met with representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., and that Secretary Tommy Thompson will be a keynote speaker at the conference to standardize information technology in health care.

"At the present time, it is a veritable mess," van der Reis said. "There are thousands of systems and subsystems working independently, instead of being interconnected.

"At the exploratory workshop meeting, 10 people from academia and 20 from industry will sit down to address the issues involved in clinical information exchange, particularly across different organizations. This set of discussions will be developed into ‘blue papers’, allowing people attending the working conference to focus on specific aspects of standardization.

"We already have received considerable expressions of interest and support and have received commitment of a matching grant for $100,000," he said. "Additional sponsors will be from corporate, private sources."