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Andrew Gregorowicz |
Moving Towards a New Standard for Healthcare IT
Andrew Gregorowicz
April 2010
Many doctors and medical organizations have changed the way they record and use their patients' medical information—going from handwritten notes to digital input and using electronic transfer and storage over traditional paper medical records. In the new world of electronic health records (EHRs), doctors use different software systems and data formats. When medical information is exchanged electronically from doctor to doctor, the transfer can be bumpy, with some information getting changed or lost.
Andrew Gregorowicz is part of a MITRE team that's working to transform health IT by improving how electronic medical records are developed and standardized for transfer between different computer systems. He writes open source software to change how health information is exchanged among doctors, hospitals, labs, and specialists—a big challenge currently facing our nation. As a lead Internet applications technician and project leader, Gregorowicz works on two electronic medical records initiatives: hData and Laika (pronounced "Like-ah").
hData: A New Standard in the Making
The first initiative, hData, is developing a method of storing and exchanging health information and is a potential new software standard for health IT. "Sharing medical information can be difficult because there are so many different data systems in our chain of treatment," says Gregorowicz. "If companies with electronic health records systems and vendors of EHRs use hData, they could easily import and export information to and from other providers. This would enable your primary care physician, for example, to exchange information with your knee specialist, pharmacy, or laboratory for blood work."
Gregorowicz and his team are working toward making hData a recognized standard format for exchanging health data. "The formats that are in wide use today were developed in the early '90s and are showing their age," he says. "A number of organizations have been trying to promote new exchange formats for medical organizations, but it's difficult. The complexity of the new data exchange standards is causing struggles in government agencies as well as the private sector.
"Better standards will help organizations like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Services [for American Indians and Alaska Natives], and even the Department of Defense's military health system."
In moving hData forward, Gregorowicz and his team are working with Health Level Seven (HL7), an all-volunteer, non-profit organization involved in the development of international healthcare IT standards. "We see hData as the basic format to connect these different health information systems together."
Project Laika: Evolving and Expanding
Before he worked on hData, Gregorowicz was part of the Laika development team. Laika evaluates how well different electronic health records work together to transfer patient data. Laika compares the ability to import and export EHR data against health informatics standards. (Health informatics is the use of computer technologies in healthcare to store, share, transmit, and analyze clinical knowledge and data.) Laika thus provides an "interoperability report card" of a candidate EHR system.
The Laika project is the result of collaboration between MITRE and the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), the first organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a certifying body for EHRs. Since Laika's release in July 2008, more than 175 EHR products have completed the certification process. Gregorowicz and his team continue to work with the CCHIT to build an open-source healthcare IT community for the country that includes government, commercial, and non-profit organizations.
Cross-Corporate Data Exchange
Gregorowicz performs his interoperability and standards work with our Center for Transforming Health, a mission center within MITRE's Center for Connected Government. However, he usually works within our Department of Defense FFRDC. "MITRE has a lot of experience working with standards and integrating systems for the DoD, so it was natural for CTH to ask for our help," he says. "That's a great part of working at MITRE—the ability to share information and resources."
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In his off hours, Andy Gregorowicz likes to cook for his family, specializing in sushi and ice cream making. "I make a pretty mean mint chip," he says. "I also do a cinnamon chocolate ice cream. It's an unusual combination but the cocoa and cinnamon powders complement each other pretty well."
The calories don't seem to bother him, possibly because he runs marathons and other long-distance races. He's in training for the 10-mile Blue Cross Broad Street run that will be held in Philadelphia in May. Billed as the largest 10-miler in the United States with a maximum of 30,000 runners, proceeds from the run go to the American Cancer Society.(Above: Andy Gregorowicz and his wife Heather, with children Kate and Kevin.)
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Originally from Philadelphia, Gregorowicz went to Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., where he graduated with an electrical engineering degree. During his career at MITRE, he has taken advantage of the company's advanced graduate degree program and earned his master's in computer systems engineering from Boston University. He'll be celebrating 10 years at MITRE in June.
Even though he's a project leader, Gregorowicz still likes to write code. "I try to keep my hands dirty creating architecture and technical solutions. I find that writing code balances me, and it's satisfying to share my project findings openly. It's really important that MITRE can use its federal research and development role to publish open source software.
"This is what I always wanted to do—work in the public interest. I get to apply my skills to problems that really mean something to the nation. I think MITRE is having an impact on how health information will be exchanged in this country in the next decade and I'm proud to be a part of it."
—by David A. Van Cleave
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