Andrea Ribick
Health Level Seven
+1-734-677 7777
andrea@hl7.org 

Lt. Gen. James Peake, M.D. to Keynote Conference: SOA in Healthcare: Value in a Time of Change
Conference hosted by OMG, HL7, OHT and SOA Consortium
will be held June 2-4, 2009 in Chicago, IL, USA

Needham, MA, USA and Ann Arbor, MI, USA - April 23, 2009 - OMG™, Health Level Seven® (HL7), Open Health Tools and the SOA Consortium™ today announced that The Honorable James B. Peake, M.D., Lieutenant General, USA (Ret), will be the keynote speaker at the Second Annual "SOA in Healthcare: Value in a Time of Change," conference. Nominated by President George W. Bush to be the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Peake served in that post from December 2007 through January 2009. The conference will be held June 2-4, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago, IL. Registration details may be found online at http://www.omg.org/soa-healthcare.

Dr. Peake will give the keynote address at the SOA in Healthcare conference on "Who Defines the 'Service' in SOA?". A champion of timely, accessible, and high-quality medical care, Peake advocated the vital role of IT to directly and effectively support the VA's medical care program. Recognized for his support of the use of the EHR to support productivity, healthcare quality, and patient safety, he provided the leadership and funding within the VA and the Federal Health community to develop secure, interoperable health IT solutions.

"I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this conference with its focus on creating the means for the open sharing of information to streamline the business of healthcare. With the attention the business challenges facing the healthcare industry are now receiving, it is more important than ever for the IT community to find and apply tools like SOA to align with those business needs," said James B. Peake, M.D., Lieutenant General, USA (Ret).

In his role as the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Peake oversaw the leadership and operations of a USD$90B federal agency containing a national USD$40B healthcare delivery organization. The Veterans Health Administration contains approximately 150 hospitals, operating over 1400 points of care with a staff of almost 250,000.

About the Keynote Speaker
James Peake, M.D., was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs on October 30, 2007. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on December 14, 2007, and served from December 2007 through January 2009.

Dr. Peake was the principal advocate for veterans in the U.S. government and directed the nation's second largest cabinet department, responsible for a nationwide system of healthcare services, benefits programs, and national cemeteries for America's veterans and dependents. During his tenure, VA employed more than 280,000 people at hundreds of medical centers, nursing homes, benefits offices, and national cemeteries throughout the country. One of Dr. Peake's major responsibilities and accomplishments was the assembly of VA's budget for fiscal year 2009, considered the most representative budget to support veterans' needs since the early 1950's.

Dr. Peake is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Society of Thoracic Surgeons, and the American College of Cardiology. He has been honored with the Order of Military Merit; the "A" Professional Designator; and the Medallion, Surgeon General of the United States.

Conference Overview
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) adoption is viewed as a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise due to increased opportunity for productivity and integration, and requires significant changes for both business and IT executives. The focus of the SOA in Healthcare conference is to convey real-world experiences, assembling a community of peers to exchange ideas and discuss what has worked, what did not work, and review best practices for attendees to benefit from lessons learned faced in real implementations. Not a "tech industry" event, this conference is exclusively healthcare focused, and will highlight the challenges unique to healthcare organizations and emphasize cross-industry solutions that are viable within the healthcare domain. It is targeted primarily to a health-IT savvy audience. Everyone with an interest in SOA in healthcare is invited to attend.

Registration & Information
This workshop is sponsored by Annual Sponsors No Magic, SPARX Systems, Intel and Model Driven Solutions as well as Event Sponsors Gold Sponsor EDS, an HP company; and Silver Sponsor Appian. The early-bird registration discount is available until May 11, 2009. The registration cut-off for the Hyatt Regency O'Hare is May 11, 2009. Hotel and registration information is available at http://www.omg.org/soa-healthcare. Exhibit space is available; for more information contact Mike Narducci at marketing@omg.org +1-781-444 0404. Sponsorship opportunities are available; contact Ken Berk at ken.berk@omg.org or +1-781-444 0404.

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About Health Level Seven (HL7)
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. (www.HL7.org) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards development organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7’s more than 2,300 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, which include more than 90 percent of the information systems vendors serving healthcare.

About The SOA Consortium
The SOA Consortium is an advocacy group of end users, service providers and technology vendors committed to helping the Global 1000, major government agencies, and mid-market businesses successfully adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by 2010. SOA Consortium founding enterprise members include Fortune 200 companies in Financial Services, Travel, Manufacturing, Retail and Telecommunications. Sponsors are Cisco, HP, IBM Corporation, Layer 7 Technologies, NEC Sphere, SPARX Systems and Sun Microsystems, Inc. Participants include Fortune 1000 corporations, major government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Any organization may join the SOA Consortium. The SOA Consortium is managed by OMG.

For more information, please visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/ or email info@soa-consortium.org. 

Note to editors: SOA Consortium, OMG and Object Management Group are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About Open Health Tools
Open Health Tools is an open source community with a vision of enabling a ubiquitous ecosystem where members of the Health and IT professions can collaborate to build interoperable systems that enable patients and their care providers to have access to vital and reliable medical information at the time and place it is needed. Open Health Tools will generate a vibrant active ecosystem involving software product and service companies, medical equipment companies, health care providers, insurance companies, government health service agencies, and standards organizations. For more information please visit www.openhealthtools.org.

About OMG
OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium that in 2009 is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies, including: Real-time, Embedded and Specialized Systems, Analysis & Design, Architecture-Driven Modernization and Middleware and an even wider range of industries, including: Business Modeling and Integration, C4I, Finance, Government, Green Computing, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal Compliance, Life Sciences Research, Manufacturing Technology, Robotics, Software-Based Communications and Space.

OMG’s modeling standards, including the Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®) and Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management. OMG’s middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA®) and support a wide variety of industries.

More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org.  OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA.

Note to editors: MDA, Model Driven Architecture, OMG Logo, XMI, UML, UML logo and CORBA are registered trademarks, and OMG, Object Management Group, MOF, MDA Logos, BPMN and Unified Modeling Language are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Edited by Stephanie