UPMC Named to InformationWeek 500 List of Innovative Technology Users

Based on its industry-leading efforts to improve service while reducing costs through technology “virtualization,” the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) has been named to the 2007 InformationWeek 500 list. For two decades, InformationWeek has identified and honored the nation’s most innovative users of information technology across all industries with its annual listing.

The 500 companies were revealed at a gala awards ceremony on Sept. 17 during the InformationWeek 500 conference in Tucson, Ariz. UPMC, ranked at No. 105, was among 22 health care and medical companies identified in the top 250. UPMC has made the list every year since 2002. To be ranked, companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue are asked to complete qualifying applications that include essays on business technology strategies and a quantitative section on technology priorities. InformationWeek notes that its list “celebrates accomplishment,” not simply the biggest information technology (IT) spenders.

During the awards event, UPMC Chief Information Officer Dan Drawbaugh also was honored as the magazine’s “Chief of the Year” for 2006. The work of Drawbaugh and his team to deploy integrated information systems for ensuring that patients at UPMC get the right care at the right time was featured in the Dec. 4, 2006 issue of InformationWeek. Mr. Drawbaugh has been instrumental in recent years in negotiating agreements with such industry leaders as Alcatel, IBM and dbMotion to transform the technological infrastructure at UPMC, which includes 19 hospitals and more than 400 outpatient sites and doctors’ offices.

“UPMC is once again honored to be part of this prestigious group of technology innovators,” said Mr. Drawbaugh. “We recognize that harnessing the power of information technology is essential to our goal of providing the world’s best and most cost-effective patient care. As we’ve demonstrated with our significant investments in electronic health records and IT virtualization, health care leaders also must be technology leaders.”

The InformationWeek 500 recognition centered on UPMC’s sweeping virtualization effort with key technology partner IBM. The approach allowed UPMC to consolidate servers and storage while managing rapid growth and providing better service to users. Using advanced IBM technology, UPMC consolidated UNIX applications on existing servers to better utilize processing power, while leaving plenty of room for new applications and growth and eliminating the need for two additional servers costing nearly $12 million. At the same time, Windows and Linux applications were reduced from 450 physical servers to only 22 using VMware products. The result: estimated cost savings for server leasing, network connections, rack space and power consumption of $11 million over three years of operation.

UPMC has long been recognized as an IT leader. It has been named one of the 100 Most Wired hospitals and health systems in the United States by Hospitals & Health Networks, the journal of the American Hospital Association, for eight years in a row. It also has been honored for its technology innovations by the Computerworld Honors Program and CIO Magazine.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is the largest integrated health care enterprise in Pennsylvania and one of the leading nonprofit health systems in the country. It has appeared eight times on the prestigious U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll of “America’s Best Hospitals,” most recently earning 13th position in 2007. Widely recognized for its innovations in patient care, research, technology and health care management, UPMC has transformed the economic landscape in western Pennsylvania. The region’s largest employer, with 45,000 employees and nearly $7 billion in revenue, UPMC comprises 19 tertiary, specialty and community hospitals, 400 outpatient sites and doctors’ offices, retirement and long-term care facilities, an insurance plan with more than 1 million members, and commercial and international ventures. About 5,000 physicians are affiliated with UPMC, including more than 2,300 employed physicians.