OMG to Bring Together Major Healthcare Companies and Standards Organizations to Explore Software Interoperability.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2004

The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) today announced an upcoming OMG Healthcare Information Day, "Exploring Interoperability Requirements in Healthcare", taking place on April 29, 2004 during its Technical Meeting in St. Louis, MO, USA. The Information Day will bring together major healthcare companies and standards organizations interested in learning more about the challenge of software interoperability requirements and the role modeling can play in creating viable solutions. Participating companies and standards organizations include MedicAlert, CIBER, ExpressScripts, PatientKeeper, Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, NCPDP, Health Level Seven (HL7) and Healthcare Informatics Standards Board (HISB).

The program will kick off with an introduction by OMG Chairman and CEO, Dr. Richard Soley and will feature case studies presented by MedicAlert, CIBER and ExpressScripts. In addition, OMG, ASC X12, NCPDP and HL7 will illustrate how each organization is working to create interoperability in the emerging Electronic Health Record standards arena. The Information Day will conclude with a panel of end-user and standards-organization presenters with a discussion to determine "Where do we go from here?"

"The healthcare industry, after years of paper records, proprietary databases and partial solutions, is finally prepared to embrace a standard for the electronic health record. Now it is time to make sure that different health information systems can to talk to each other to provide safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable care for the patient. I am optimistic that the OMG, with its focus on establishing standards for interoperability in many domains and on many platforms, will be able to play an important role in this effort," said David Harrington, CTO of the MedicAlert(R) Foundation, a 48-year old provider of medical and health information for its members in emergency situations. "MedicAlert looks forward to working with these and other companies as well as Standards Development Organizations to improve patient care and patient safety, and to save lives."

All are welcome to attend. There is registration fee of $150.00. For information and to register, go to http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/healthcareday-info.htm. To obtain information regarding the OMG Technical Meeting (April 25-30, 2004) sponsored by The Boeing Company, Express Scripts, Inc., and Object Computing, Inc. go to http://www.omg.org/registration/registration-info.htm.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. OMG's standards cover multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and software development environments. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA, include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today.

Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, and international marketing representatives in Japan, the UK, and Germany, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. OMG member companies write, adopt, and maintain the organization's standards following a mature, open process. All current OMG specifications may be downloaded without charge from the organization's website, www.omg.org; the site also provides additional information about OMG and its activities. For information on joining the OMG, or questions not addressed on the website, please contact OMG headquarters by email at [e-mail], by phone at [phone], or by fax at [phone].

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