John Selmyer
Professional
Founded Dawning Technologies, 1984;
serves as President.
Prior to 1984, worked in sales
at two major IVD instrument companies,
worked as a respiratory therapist
and as a clinical laboratory technician;
and served in the U.S. Army
at
Walter Reed Army Institute for Research,
Washington, DC.
Published papers on laboratory
instrument interfacing
and the
hemodynamics of septic shock.
Education
BS, Biology
Rochester Institute of Technology;
MA, Educational Psychology
University of Rochester;
registered respiratory therapist.
Personal
Married to Yvette for 35 years;
has two adult children and two granddaughters.
Moved Dawning Technologies
from
upstate New York to Fort Myers, FL,
in 2005,
and became an avid boater.
Enjoys the diminished annual snowfall
of Southwest Florida
Get more out of IT. The Internet has changed everything, but we
still cannot connect healthcare devices and systems like plugging in a
telephone. Many healthcare systems use Web-based protocols for user
interaction and access to documentation. Healthcare is becoming more
automated and data intensive, with more systems in and out of the
hospital environment. At Dawning, we feel, done properly, middleware can
help clients get more performance and useful life out of their IT
investments. We achieve this by focusing on creating products with
greater functionality, easier user controls, and increased Web
compatibility in a more regulated environment.
Intelligent integrator. Our middleware is best described as an
intelligent integrator residing between disparate systems and devices
(such as HIS, EMR, LIS, and individual lab devices). Middleware can
provide custom processing capability not found on any individual
systems, possibly complementing the performance of all the components
and certainly that of the LIS. Beyond the ability to handle multiple
connections, protocols, and message-mapping requirements, the real
benefits of middleware come from the user-defined, rules-based
processing capabilities. These allow consistent decision-support actions
to be taken in tightly defined circumstances, from simple range checking
and comment additions to extensive rules filters defining an
autoverification process. The ability to access data from multiple
directions and databases for rules processing is an added advantage of
middleware.
Customer connections. As more analytical devices and information
systems support connectivity to an LIS and the value of sharing information
among these entities multiplies, there will be more pressure to complete and
refine the integration. Our first focus is to create middleware with the
capability to benefit those who use it. Then we do our best to empower our
customers to take full advantage of middleware, including the ability to
increase their complexity of use over time. We offer webinars on a variety
of middleware topics in which anyone can participate, and we present various
training sessions for customers, either at our facility or onsite, so users
can do more as they learn more.
Middleware makes automation work. Automation can help with today's shortage of
trained lab personnel. Our primary middleware application, JResultNet, can
automate a wide variety of result data-handling conditions that currently
require some manual intervention. The logical goal is autoverification —
where only the results that have failed some defined rules filters require
manual review. DataMiner is a tool for analyzing the content of databases,
which is suited to investigating laboratory utilization — with or without
middleware in use — to identify where orders are being inappropriately
placed. Used with middleware, this tool can provide real-time test
utilization control and intelligent reflexing using data read from external
databases. The benefits are operating more efficiently and being assured all
appropriate data conditions are caught.
Community concerns. Dawning is a small company based in Lee
County, Florida, one of the areas of the country hardest hit by the
economic downturn. Our county's unemployment rate is more than 13%. The
most meaningful thing Dawning Technologies can do to impact the
community is to conduct our business to the best of our ability and to
hire locally. We maintain a flexible management style, so our employees
have the opportunity to participate in their chosen community and family
activities.
