Moving Forward on Digital Pathology Development

Drawbaugh: We remain on the path that I had communicated with you two years ago. In fact, we’re now at the point where we’ve created—we’ve developed within UPMC what we’re calling the Technology Development Center. That is a fully funded center that will end up with approximately 25 full-time employees who are Ph.D. scientists, researchers and developers. The focus is on the goal of innovation in IT, using UPMC’s key assets, to really differentiate us from other healthcare delivery systems. And this aligns with the GE relationship, because it will make us an attractive partner to for-profit healthcare companies. Looking at leveraging our healthcare delivery, our informaticists.

The TDC is funded at the level of $8 million. And going back to what I communicated two years ago on the joint investment relationship that we have, this aligns very well with creating the pipeline for new products, new solutions for healthcare, where we could consider them, much as with GE—I could see us returning to GE and saying, ‘say, we’ve come up with this new technology, and let’s do another innovation.’ And it also provides for our strategic partners, again like GE, where GE will look at us and say, UPMC has the domain expertise, the capability, and the technology expertise, to make us (UPMC) an ideal partner. Obviously, it’s a collaboration type of model. So that’s how we’re thinking of the future.

HCI: You have a level of self-confidence that is noteworthy in this operating and economic environment. You don’t seem to be hunkering down.

Drawbaugh: Yes, we’re definitely not hunkering down. We remain true to our organization’s vision and goals. If anything, I see a greater focus with our president and CEO, where he’s very bullish about these information technology opportunities and strategic relationships.