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Webinar Series Will Present the Latest Information
on Applying Data Standards to the Healthcare
Supply Chain

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Chicago, March 13, 2008 — The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) of the American Hospital Association, the Coalition for Healthcare eStandards (CHeS), and the Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition (Standards Coalition) are sponsoring a five-part webinar series this spring that will provide practical information and important lessons for facilitating the transition to electronic standards in the healthcare supply chain.

“Data standards are critical to improving patient safety and eliminating inefficiencies in today’s healthcare supply chain, much of which is still managed on Excel spreadsheets and reconciled manually,” says Standards Coalition Chair Joseph Dudas, director of accounting and supply chain informatics at the Mayo Clinic. “The webinar series is part of a full-scale effort to educate and enable the industry to implement data standards so we can all begin realizing the vast benefits in patient care and cost savings as soon as possible.”

The free webinars bring together experts from around the globe to provide real-world case studies, insights and the most up-to-date information about adopting data standards from GS1, an international organization dedicated to designing and implementing supply chain standards. The Standards Coalition, a collaborative of more than 30 organizations representing the entire healthcare supply chain that includes AHRMM and CHeS, last fall endorsed the adoption of GS1’s Global Location Number (GLN) for organizational identification and Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) for product identification.

The Standards Coalition, which was founded and is managed by The National Alliance for Health Information Technology, also recommended GS1’s Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) to serve as the healthcare industry’s system for registering, validating, disseminating, and synchronizing product identification information. Since last fall, the Standards Coalition has been working with GS1 to enhance the standards to meet healthcare’s needs.

The webinar schedule is:

AHRMM will award attendees 1.0 Contact Hours toward CMRP re-certification or 0.1 CEU credits for participating in each session. Registration is online at www.ahrmm.org.

About AHRMM
The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) is the leading national association for executives in healthcare resource and materials management. A personal membership group of the American Hospital Association, AHRMM serves more than 3,900 active members. Founded in 1962, AHRMM advances and supports the healthcare supply chain profession by providing leadership, education, resources and networking. For more information, visit www.ahrmm.org.

About the Coalition for Healthcare eStandards, Inc.
The Coalition for Healthcare eStandards, Inc., (CHeS) is a collaborative of organizations dedicated to promoting the adoption and use of open data standards in the health care industry. Through the work of task forces, CHeS makes recommendations to accelerate industry-wide adoption of comprehensive data standards and encourages other industry representatives to participate in e-commerce standards work groups. For more information about the Coalition for Healthcare eStandards, visit www.CHeStandards.org.

About the Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition
The Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition is a collaborative of organizations representing the entire healthcare supply chain working to enable the delivery of quality patient care in a cost-effective and efficient manner through the adoption of industry standards. The Standards Coalition utilizes a rigorous and transparent process, facilitated by The National Alliance for Health Information Technology, to make recommendations on specific standards and plans for enabling their use. The Standards Coalition is comprised of healthcare providers, suppliers, group purchasing organizations, technology companies, industry associations, and governmental entities. More information is available at www.hscsc.org.

Members of the Standards Coalition’s Oversight Committee are Abbott, American Hospital Association, Amerinet, Ascension Health, Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM), BD, Cardinal Health, Coalition for Healthcare eStandards (CHeS), U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Geisinger Health System Foundation, GHX, Health Industry Distributors Association, Intermountain Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems, Lawson, Mayo Clinic, McKesson, MedAssets, Medline, Mercy Health Systems ROi, Owens & Minor, Novation, Premier, Sentara Healthcare, Strategic Marketplace Initiative, University Hospitals, U.S. Department of Defense, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

About The National Alliance for Health Information Technology
The National Alliance for Health Information Technology is a diverse partnership of senior executives from all healthcare sectors working to advance the adoption of clinical information technology systems to achieve measurable improvements in patient safety, quality of care and operating performance. The Alliance collaborates with healthcare and government leaders to influence healthcare decision-makers to act effectively in creating an efficient, safe, unified, and inclusive health system. Since its founding in 2002, the Chicago-based Alliance has helped forge consensus and accelerate progress on such important initiatives as developing an industry-endorsed interoperability definition, creating a public directory of health IT standards and authoring Rules of Engagement: A proven path for instilling, and then installing a CPOE approach that works. The Alliance is a co-founder of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and its CEO chaired the Commission on Systemic Interoperability (CSI). More information about the Alliance is available at www.nahit.org.