At the first ever Patient Safety Science and Technology Summit, held in Laguna Niguel, Calif., nine medical device companies signed pledges to makes their devices interoperable. Interoperability has been the buzzword among key industry players as of late, in light of the inevitable rise of the common information cloud and wireless technology. The pledges will make collected patient data accessible to patients and clinicians on mobile devices, launching a movement designed to reverse the rise in preventable patient deaths at U.S. hospitals.

Signing the pledge were Cercacor, Cerner, Drager, GE Healthcare Systems, Masimo, Smiths Medical, Sonosite, Surgicount, and Zoll.

“We pledge to improve patient safety by allowing medical industry companies and healthcare providers to access patient data by maintaining open interfaces that enable third party devices and systems to communicate with GE Healthcare patient monitors, therapy devices and clinical information systems,” read the pledge made by Tom Gentile, president and CEO of GE’s healthcare division, and senior vice president of the company. “I am personally encouraged to see the partnership and mutual commitment of the medical industry and clinical providers to do the right thing for patients, everywhere. This is GE Healthcare’s pledge and we invite our hospital providers and industry partners to join in the pursuit of zero preventable deaths.”

His statement was typical of the other pledges signed.

When first identified more than 10 years ago in the Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human, nearly 100,000 hospital patients were dying unnecessarily each year. The hospital death toll has doubled since then, with more than 200,000 preventable patient deaths annually. Joe Kiani, founder and chairman of the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare, and CEO of medical device company Masimo, created the Patient Safety Science and Technology Summit to bring leading industry minds together to solve the patient safety problems we collectively face by connecting people, ideas and technologies.

The main driver of the pledge initiative was the need for an “open architecture—to allow disparate machines to talk to one another,” Masimo spokesperson Mike Drummond told Medical Product Outsourcing. As far as data privacy goes: All interoperability initiatives will adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (known as HIPAA). "All the pledges—and any going forward—were made subject to HIPAA and other applicable privacy laws," Drummond said.

“My fellow medtech CEOs have taken patient safety to heart in a way that this industry has never done before,” Kiani said. “I am proud to be standing with these eight other pioneers as we break down the walls of data ownership to empower patients and clinicians with device interoperability, information, and technology integration that will save lives and reduce costs. As other medical technology leaders become aware of what we have begun to accomplish, we look forward to announcing more companies committed to the same objective.”

Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore, Md.) and director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (part of Johns Hopkins), applauded the medical device companies for making public pledge:

“Thanks to these courageous leaders who have made public pledges, patients around the globe will be safer,” Pronovost said. “These companies are blazing a trail in the name of patient safety and dignity—a move that will elevate their standing in the medical community as well as the market.”

The Masimo Foundation is a Marina del Ray, Calif.-based private charitable foundation that is focused on improving patient care, preserving patient dignity and reducing cost of care, through philanthropic programs and research initiatives intended to foster an environment of aligned incentives, highest level of ethics for those who participate in patient care, and competition.

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