Going Above and Beyond

Open Data Pledge

The badge that Open Data Pledge signatories receive to proudly display.

Over 93 companies have taken decisive action by signing the Patient Safety Movement Foundation’s Open Data Pledge, first established in 2012.

In this Open Data Pledge these medtech and healthcare technology companies have agreed that they will not knowingly interfere or charge for the data their products are purchased for, subject to all applicable privacy laws.

In June 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), shared a letter of support around the principle of openly sharing data.

You can view the standard language of the PSMF’s Open Data Pledge here.

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What action can hospital leaders take to help promote data sharing and interoperability?

Decision-makers in the hospital have the power when purchasing new systems and devices to change their standardized procurement language to promote interoperability.

Specifically, the Patient Safety Movement Foundation recommends adding to standardized procurement language that “the vendor will share the data their devices are purchased for without knowing interference or charge”. If the vendor won’t sign it, and there is another option, give your business to the vendor that will sign the contract that promotes interoperability. By including this language, vendors that are charging to share data or are interfering with data sharing will see that their business is going elsewhere and may change their ways, for the better.

Join/Login to Sign the Pledge

Testimonials

We always sought to provide our clinical teams with state-of-the-art monitoring platforms to support patient care and enhance clinician workflow. We also saw the need to integrate our solutions to optimize usability for our front-line staff. Our organizational governance committees always included Interoperability and adherence to international interoperability standards as a “must-have” criteria in the selection process. And, the Patient Safety Movement Foundation’s Open Data Pledge served as a powerful tool to help identify which vendors were going to work with us to be interoperable. -George Blike, MD, Former Chief Quality Officer, Dartmouth-Hitchcock

Our recent work integrating monitoring system data with the electronic medical record provided quantitative evidence that healthcare systems’ interoperability can increase information availability and accuracy. We hope that leaders of other health systems will see the value of the Open Data Pledge and the need to liberate data across disparate systems to improve patient safety. -Sue McGrath, PhD, Director, Surveillance Analytics Core, Analytics Institute, Dartmouth-Hitchcock