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Orlando, Fla. - (July 10, 2003)—When a new kind of health care technology joined forces with a sophisticated computer firm, the result was a whole new way to treat disease - and a Central Florida firm is the world leader in producing it.
Applied Health Science, which recently relocated to Orlando to join the University of Central Florida Technology Incubator, created a unique partnership with Data-form Corporation to form the Global Health Security Network.
In the early 1990s, Patrick McNees, Ph.D., president of Applied Health Science, developed a new way to track the healing process of chronic wounds. To valuate treatment, he needed input from doctors and nurses all over the world. Moving from local networks to a centralized Internet-based system provided new challenges. McNees, an advocate of healthcare confidentiality, searched for a computerized database that would make it easy for doctors to share accurate information without divulging patient confidentiality. "I went to security companies to try to license that capability but it didn't exist in the form we needed anywhere," McNees said.
McNees and his colleagues developed their own encryption scheme that had the capability of "blinding" selected data even to the host. However, it required a secure, scaleable and economical network infrastructure. McNees turned to Data-form Corporation, whose chief executive officer Rich Lerz, deployed Data-form's proprietary worldwide network to meet the infrastructure, communications and scalable needs of a medical network.
"Global Health Security Network came out of that effort," said McNees. "Combining proficiency in health care procedures, data security and software development with the know-how to link the hardware networks together cost-effectively was the key," added McNees.
What it unlocked was the Global Health Security Network, with aims to be the largest collaborative medical database in the world.
Carol Ann Dykes, managing director of the UCF Technology Incubator, said the Global Health Security Network is just one example of the way emerging technologies depend on multiple disciplines to create important new technologies.
"The whole aim of the UCF Technology Incubator is to provide the sort of base of knowledge from which these sorts of associations can form quickly, efficiently and with positive, profitable results," Dykes said.
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