By Kathleen Acuff

El Camino Hospital nurse Mary Von Dohlen and Eclipsys Information Systems Manager Marilyn Davis demonstrate the hospital’s new computer system.

Employees of El Camino Hospital bade farewell to the Obi-Wan Kenobi figure among them at a retirement party for their old medical information system (MIS) last week.

The youngster that will pick up the mantle in November is even more powerful than the old master. Employees joked that they are in training to become Jedi knights of the new system, which they have named ECHO. The acronym, which stands for El Camino Hospital Online, echoes the name of the employee newsletter of the 1980s. The underlying system is Eclipsys’ Sun-riseXA.

“This is a very historical, symbolic event,” said hospital CEO Lee Domanico. He added jokingly, “I hope the birth of the new system is as celebratory as the old system’s retirement is going to be.”

The original MIS, implemented in 1971 and in use ever since, was the first of its kind in the world. It tracked patient information and kept it all in once place for staff members who needed to consult it. But it was “a great big information pit” that lacked tools to help physicians, nurses and others find what they needed quickly, said CIO Mark Zielazinski.

The new system will be Web-based and “smarter” - equipped with decision-support and data-mining tools. Within a couple of years, all the computerized information systems in the hospital will be integrated into the new system, Zielazinski said.

“My mantra has been ‘Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate,’” he laughed.

Why El Camino?

Why was El Camino Hospital chosen as the first implementation site?

“Location, location, location,” said Zielazinski, referring to its proximity to NASA Ames and Lockheed, which developed the original system. And, he added, it didn’t hurt that the hospital was known as an early adopter of technology - it had some of the first kidney machines, as they were called, and one of the first MRIs.

With millions of dollars in federal funding, NASA Ames and Lockheed were trying to adapt computerized military information systems to civilian purposes with an eye on the marketplace.

“It’s easier to do a commercial project in a nonacademic hospital, and the goal was commercial projects to solve real business needs,” Zielazinski said.

John Gomez, who heads the technology development at Eclipsys, said, “What was built at Lockheed was truly groundbreaking. Those engineers wrote millions upon millions of lines of code.”

Gomez said Eclipsys’ engineers will continue to learn from physicians about ways to make the technology more useful to them. “Internally, we think of MIS as evolving rather than retiring. It is an evolution,” he said.