CTO & VP Engineering Applications:

I am a clinical informatics researcher, engineering manager, and an implementation manager. I have spent the last 26 years working in “the field”: that is to say, my experiences have been just that–experiential. During my doctoral work, I continued to carry the responsibility of employment. The doctoral work was undertaken to prove a research hypothesis and was validated against data measured and observed from live patients in OR and Critical Care environments (under IRB # 570-0, University of Pennsylvania).

Software & Systems Engineering

I have developed both simulation and production quality software during my career. I began in the aerospace industry in the 80s and a life change caused me to rethink my career and focus on medicine and healthcare. It was in medicine that I found my passion. However, I have found ways of applying key areas from other disciplines to the medical field. Synergies of applications and technologies in aerospace related to multisensor tracking, data fusion, fluid flow, and other technical disciplines are very appropriate for the medical field. The systems engineering paradigms that are the basis for aerospace systems integration are enormously useful and powerful concepts that can inform and help solve key problems in healthcare information technology related to data integration and systems management and monitoring.

Medical Device Connectivity and Systems Integration

My interest in medical device connectivity arose as the result of an engineering problem I found during my days of basic research at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. My dissertation research focused on developing a fuzzy-logic based approach for predicting the weaning viability of patients who had undergone coronary bypass grafting. The research required collecting rather large quantities of data on these patients, whom I followed from surgery through extubation within the surgical or general surgical ICUs at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. The enormous quantity of data I was required to collect in order to build the requisite post-operative weaning models would be facilitated greatly if I could collect much of the medical device data automatically. However, in those days, nothing existed that could provide automatic data collection: I was stuck. I worked with the device manufacturer’s user manuals that I obtained from the Clinical Engineering department and was able to determine that I could collect data through the medical device serial ports on the the mechanical ventilators and physiologic monitors. I would augment these data with review of the clinical charts for laboratory data and other information (demographics) to fulfill the necessary demographic requirements to stratify the data properly. I wrote software and implemented on “portable” computers (not many laptops in those days–some early ones running early Windows, as I recall) and collected data at the bedsides of patients within the ICUs. I would augment my data with manual collection of charting data within the ORs during the CABG surgeries.

Days were long. Very long. I felt like a 3rd year resident going through the grind.

Nonetheless, the effort paid off. I was able to prove my hypothesis, supported by lots of data, and from there I was “bitten” by the medical device connectivity “bug.” However, I always viewed medical device connectivity as the means to the end–which was better clinical decision making through more complete and robust information at the point of care. The end was better care. The means to that end was better data.

Engineering in Medicine is a Passion

My path for the past 20 years has been focused on engineering in medicine. I have written 2 books (you can find information out about them from this site or go to Amazon.com and look them up using my name). To date I have also been the inventor or co-inventor of 6 awarded patents.

Book I: Integrating Medical Device Data into the EMR

Book II: Medical Device Data and Modeling for Clinical Decision Making

Contact me for engineering questions, systems integration questions, clinical informatics questions, or just to chat:

John R Zaleski on email and on LinkedIn.

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