Proposal for OHT – Virtual Lab (VLAB)
Bill Rudman, AHIMA Foundation
David Westfall, AHIMA
©2013
AHIMA Virtual Lab (VLAB) History
VLAB was a response to our academic partners request for
practical experience training that supported the educational
objectives during the 2 or 4 year programs.
AHIMA’s Virtual Lab (VLAB) is a neutral environment for Health
Information Management (HIM) applications. The applications
are the same applications that are available in hospitals and
other health care facilities world wide.
It currently supports 7 vendors and is used by 10,000 students
each year
©2013
Current VLAB Challenges
• AHIMA’s present VLAB (Version 1) key challenges:
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Non platform based
Scalability Issues
Difficult to quickly add/enhance applications
Lack of integration of applications
Unable to deliver Internationally
Lack of any significant reporting capabilities
Not designed to support continuing education or corporate
needs
©2013
VLAB “Version 2”
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Centralized Platform Solution; easy to support multiple vendors
Scalable
North American and Internationally focus
Applications Easily Added
– Application Programming Interface (API) based
• Applications integrated
– “AHIMA Hospital”
• Future Proof
• Strong Reporting Functionality
• Easy to add
– Users (Various Types)
– Countries and regions
• Easy to deliver and maintain
©2013
AHIMA VLAB Vision
The vision of VLAB is to provide a platform for applications in
healthcare that can be provided to individuals looking to gain
practical experience in real world applications. In essence, we
want to provide healthcare workers a “virtual AHIMA hospital”
that allows the individual to be exposed to a realistic healthcare
experience from the perspective of the information that flows
through a healthcare system.
©2013
Value of VLAB Version 2
• User Value
– Continue to provide an environment where healthcare students can
receive appropriate practical experience
– Provide a wider range of today’s HIM applications as well as support
the ability to easily add tomorrows applications
• Appropriately integrate applications
– Environment that is easy to use and navigate and provides the ability
to support all of the students need in an integrated fashion
– Be able to support all user environments
• International users and environments
• Corporate users and environments
• Individual users
©2013
Value of VLAB Version 2
• Application Providers
– Continue to provide an environment where application providers can
have their applications marketed to present and future users
– Provide an environment where application providers can gain
information around how their applications are being used
• Advanced reporting capabilities to provide real world user
feedback on application performance and design
– Provide an environment where application providers can gain
information around how their applications work in conjunction with
other healthcare applications
©2013
Value of VLAB Version 2
• The Healthcare Industry
– Provide a vehicle that supports and enhances
industry education for all participants
– Provide a vehicle that will help the public good
– Provide a platform for experimentation and
research into new designs and features
– Research vehicle to collect and test
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Value of VLAB Version 2
• Open Health Tools
– Provide an environment where OHT can validate
and showcase it’s products and architectures in a
neutral environment
– Provide an environment where application
integration can be tested and validated in a
consistent and long standing beta environment
– Provide a showcase where application providers
can display their products in a neutral
environment
©2013