2003 Award Recipient
Emery J. Stephans
President, Enterprise Analysis Corporation, Stamford, Connecticut
The Critical and Point of Care Testing Division is proud to present its first award for Outstanding Achievement in Point of Care Testing to Emery Stephans for his contributions to the development of a Connectivity Standard for point of care testing devices. The Standard provides a “blueprint” for manufacturer’s of point of care testing devices that will allow a wide variety of devices to communicate with clinical laboratory and hospital computers and download test results generated at the bedside into the patient’s permanent electronic medical record. Prior to the development of the Connectivity Standard, each device required a different “language” and equipment for communication, or it had no ability to communicate at all. The development of the Connectivity Standard is expected to greatly simplify the management of point-of-care laboratory results as they become an increasingly important component of medical practice.
Emery Stephans role in developing the standard began when he was appointed as the first Chair of the the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (formerly AACC) Point of Care Testing Division’s Industrial Liaison Committee. With the appointment, he was given the charge of developing a connectivity standard. Initially this was thought to be more of a consciousness-raising effort than a truly achievable objective. Fortunately, Emery did not see it this way and proceeded to identify and obtain support from several individuals who had participated in development of the HL7 protocol for medical devices. Emery found industrial partners to provide the organizational and financial support needed to create an ad hoc organization for developing the standard. This organization became known as the Connectivity Industry Consortium (CIC). Emery was also heavily involved providing various types of support as the CIC matured and created the Connectivity Standard. Although there were many individual’s whose contributions were critical to the success of the effort, Emery’s role was clearly the largest and most pervasive. He provided the spark that got the effort going and the glue that held it together.