Meeting the Standards with Standardization

As director of the customer experience for a hospital system in New York City, informatics is key to my mission of improving satisfaction through training and implementing standardization.

I have led a multiyear project that brought together food and nutrition teams and IT to reorganize and consolidate our foodservice database and standardize processes across all of our locations. There was an incredible learning curve and I was impressed with the amount of detail that went into planning and executing all projects in the IT world.

Today, in my current role, I am a part of a similar project with the goal of bringing all of our sites onto a single corporate database so that all central information (recipes, compliance, allergens) will be available to everyone. This will include getting interfaces from the EHR and to the end users who will use tablets to get meal selections from patients.

Towards the Future of Informatics

I have a great interest in guiding the future of nutrition information. I serve on the user advisory council for CBORD, a leading provider of foodservice management technology. In this position, I have met so many people who use automation for the same purpose as our hospital. I also have the privilege of representing health care foodservice when meeting with CBORD leadership.

I also work on the Healthy Nutrition Academy' Interoperability and Standards Committee. This group works with national and international professional organizations that develop health information technology standards. Our mission is to ensure that nutrition is being addressed in EHR standards.

Sharon Solomon, RD, is a director of customer experience for Morrison Healthcare, working at the Mt. Sinai Health System in New York City.