BALTIMORE, Md., May 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Johns Hopkins has joined with many
leading professional medical societies to create the MedBiquitous Consortium,
a group dedicated to creating technology standards and software for education
and collaboration in online medical communities.
Fifteen organizations representing over 400,000 physicians have already
joined the Consortium, including the Council of Medical Specialty Societies,
the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of
Ophthalmology, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery,
the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Gastroenterology,
the American College of Radiology, the American Heart Association, the
American Society of Clinical Oncology, CTSNet (Cardiothoracic Surgery
Network), the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, the
International Council of Ophthalmology, and the Society for Vascular Surgery.
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and UNITAR, a virtual university in
Malaysia, have joined the Consortium as university members.
IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Rational Software (Nasdaq: RATL) will be taking
a lead role in designing the Consortium's technical architecture.
"Professional societies are the recognized leaders of knowledge within
each specialty," said Edward D. Miller, M.D., CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine
and Dean of its faculty. "MedBiquitous technologies will enable societies to
extend their leadership to the Internet arena and meet the challenges of this
innovative era."
The Consortium will create XML (Extensible Markup Language) specifications
for areas of common interest to professional medical societies. Use of XML, a
Web standard, provides a consistent and common language for medical societies
and other organizations, permitting them more easily to exchange structured
data over the Web. Using a standardized computer language, such as XML, allows
a wide and diverse group of individuals or organizations to "talk" to each
other, which greatly facilitates information gathering and online
transactions.
The Consortium also creates for its membership a suite of software tools
based on the XML standards. The tools and standards combined will allow
societies to provide a wealth of resources to their membership, including
personalized scientific content, online courses and examinations, ongoing
mechanisms to document competency, and clinical registries that track medical
outcomes and errors.
"The XML and Web services specifications developed and used by the
Consortium will enable healthcare professionals to take advantage of dynamic
connections and exchange of information through the Internet," says Robert S.
Suter, Ph.D., IBM director of e-business Standards Strategy. "Using open
standards-based middleware to facilitate better communication and
collaboration among associations will benefit the entire medical community,
and we're pleased to contribute our infrastructure expertise toward the launch
of this initiative."
"MedBiquitous Consortium technologies reflect Sun's practice of supporting
open industry standards, such as Java and XML, and supports our vision of
developing and deploying Web services as outlined in Sun's Open Net
Environment (ONE) architecture," says Todd Freter, program manager of the XML
Technology Center for Sun Microsystems. "Sun Microsystems is proud to play a
role in this initiative."
"Rational has been a pioneer in the development of software standards such
as the Unified Modeling Language," says Kirk Fuller, vice president of
worldwide strategic relationships at Rational Software. "We're very pleased
to be part of the MedBiquitous effort and we believe that using software
standards will help move the project forward more quickly and with higher
quality."
"This initiative provides a cost-effective way for societies from around
the world to develop Web technologies," said Professor Paul Sergeant, M.D.,
the Consortium's European executive director. "And what's really exciting is
the opportunity to collaborate with other specialty organizations to create
shared resources, like CTSNet, that give physicians access to comprehensive
information."
CTSNet (http://www.ctsnet.org) is an Internet portal developed by the
Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the European Association for Cardio-thoracic
Surgery, and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. CTSNet provides
the latest medical information to a global community of cardiothoracic
surgeons, patients, and healthcare professionals.
Peter S. Greene, M.D., Associate Dean for Emerging Technologies at Johns
Hopkins Medicine, was instrumental in building the CTSNet community and will
serve as the founding executive director of the MedBiquitous Consortium. Carey
J. Kriz, special assistant to the Dean/CEO of John Hopkins Medicine and a
long-time veteran of the computer industry, will be the Consortium's managing
director of commerce and industry initiatives. Valerie Fudge will serve as the
Consortium's director of communications.
Two other organizations are in place to support the MedBiquitous
Consortium. The MedBiquitous Laboratory is an academic lab created to develop
the next generation of Internet applications for professional medical
societies. MedBiquitous Services Inc. assists medical societies in organizing
global specialty networks and in deploying and operating advanced online
communities that are fully compatible with standards and specifications
created by the MedBiquitous Consortium.
For further information, visit the MedBiquitous Consortium Website at
http://www.medbiq.org/ or contact Gary Stephenson at 410-955-5384.
BIOGRAPHIES
Peter Greene, M.D.
Peter Greene is associate dean for emerging technologies at The Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine. Greene also is the executive editor
and key architect of CTSNet, the online community of 40 professional
cardiothoracic surgery societies. He has more than 15 years of experience in
information technology using a variety of medical applications in parallel to
a clinical career. Greene received his M.D. from Yale Medical School. He had
an important role in founding the MedBiquitous Consortium and will serve as
the initial executive director.
Carey Kriz
Kriz is currently the special assistant to the Dean/CEO of Johns Hopkins
Medicine. He was instrumental in the development of numerous new ventures
within Johns Hopkins Medicine, including Johns Hopkins Singapore, Pvt. Ltd.,
American Radiology Services, Inc., Johns Hopkins Imaging, and others. He also
played a pivotal role in developing the MedBiquitous Consortium. Prior to
joining Hopkins, Kriz was president and CEO of Camdat Corporation, a company
with market leadership in medical artificial intelligence; Camdat Corporation
was later purchased by the Hearst Corporation. He began his career with IBM,
and his last assignment was as head of Advanced Technology and New Business
Development in the Application Solutions Division.
SOURCE Rational Software
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Related links:
http://www.rational.com
CONTACT:
Gary Stephenson for MedBiquitous Consortium,
410-955-5384
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