Shafiq Rab, M.D., vice president and CIO at New Jersey-based Hackensack University Medical Center (UMC), was awarded the College of Healthcare Information Management Executive’s (CHIME) 2015 Innovator of the Year Award.
The award was announced at the CHIME15 Fall CIO Forum, taking place this week in Orlando, Fla. HackensackUMC is one of the first health systems in the nation to link patient-generated data from personal fitness devices and mobile apps to its electronic medical record (EMR), enabling clinicians to have a more complete view of a patient’s history, CHIME said in an announcement.
HackensackUMC also teamed with Infor to develop and implement open, vendor-neutral standards as part of the Argonaut Project. Launched in 2014, the Argonaut Project is a national effort geared around speeding up adoption of HL7’s standards framework, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).
In an interview this summer with HCI Senior Contributing Editor David Raths, Rab spoke about HackensackUMC being one of a few dozen early implementers associated with Project Argonaut. Rab said HackensackUMC has developed an application programming interface (API)-based infrastructure to eliminate care gaps and put the patient in control of their data.
Shafiq Rab, M.D.
“I am humbled and honored by this honor,” Rab said in a statement regarding the award. “It is a great recognition of the accomplishments of my team at Hackensack University Medical Center, as well as our partnership with outside partners and vendors.” Rab added that efforts like FHIR will help promote better data exchange and such efforts as President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative.“Our collective actions have significantly improved access to health data by the patient, while at the same time improving patient satisfaction,” he said.
“Achieving interoperability is one of the industry’s biggest challenges and priorities,” added CHIME President and CEO Russell Branzell. “Through Shafiq’s efforts, we are seeing how greater connectivity between providers and patients can create more efficient and effective care delivery.”
