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CERNER, EMC TO DELIVER ELECTRONIC PATIENT RECORD SOLUTIONS

Cerner Corp, a supplier of healthcare information technology, and EMC Corp announced a global reseller agreement enabling Cerner to offer the full-range of EMC networked storage systems, software and services to healthcare providers for its electronic patient record (EPR) solution here at the TEPR (Towards an Electronic Patient Record) Annual Conference and Exposition.

The exponential growth and digitization of healthcare records, as well as regulations for security, portability and retention, has put a spotlight on healthcare information management capabilities. A tiered architecture of networked storage systems can help providers access and preserve patient data indefinitely to comply with state and federal regulations like HIPAA. With an information lifecycle management strategy, patient information can be quickly delivered to authorized care givers, expediting patient care decisions.

As an offering of its Cerner Millennium architecture, Cerner will offer EMC Symmetrix, EMC CLARiiON and EMC Centera networked storage systems, as well as EMC ControlCenter family of management software to healthcare providers as part of its EPR solution. Cerner Millennium architecture enables clinicians to electronically access medical records as well as the latest evidence-based knowledge through a secure IT environment.

A few of the healthcare organizations that have already deployed solutions from Cerner and EMC include:

• BayCare Health System (Florida).
• Emory Healthcare (Georgia).
• Kaleida Health (New York).

"It's critical that clinicians have reliable access to patient information and the latest medical data from any location in order to provide quality healthcare," said Rod Coombs, Cerner vice president of technology architectures. "The EMC family of networked storage and storage management software provides our clients with a solid and expandable solution for their information needs."

From the creation of a patient record, information is recorded, captured, and actively used during a patient's lifetime, whether at a primary care visit, outpatient encounter or a hospital stay. Cerner's Picture Archiving Communications Systems (PACS) and EPR applications along with EMC's networked storage solutions will allow healthcare providers to store images for shortterm and long-term retention. These solutions help healthcare organizations manage critical information throughout a patient's life, at the lowest total cost. Cerner and EMC solutions will enable healthcare organizations to proactively manage and integrate clinical, imaging, administrative, financial, and research data within a unified and automated management environment.

"By tiering information according to clinical protocols, healthcare providers can ensure that patient records are placed on the appropriate storage platform based on the information value," said John Koury, vice president of channel marketing at EMC. "Patient billing information, for example, may only be critical for the first 90 days before being archived to a more cost-effective platform. Electronic medical record solutions from Cerner and EMC allow clinicians to capture, manage, protect, retrieve and archive critical patient information, while ultimately speeding patient care decision making."

About EMC

EMC Corp is a provider of products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.