ECRI names Prisma Health winner of the 2025 Health Technology Excellence Award

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., June 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ECRI, a global independent healthcare and patient safety nonprofit, names Prisma Health the winner of its 2025 Health Technology Excellence Award. ECRI's annual award honors a member facility for implementing an exceptional initiative to improve patient safety, reduce costs, or otherwise facilitate better strategic management of health technology.

Prisma Health is the largest healthcare provider in South Carolina. The not-for-profit organization encompasses 19 hospitals on 12 campuses, including children's, psychiatric, rehabilitation, and heart specialty facilities. As Prisma Health has expanded significantly in recent years — including merging two health systems, expanding urgent care and specialty service lines, and adding a community hospital in Maryville, Tennessee — it faced the challenge of building a resilient technology infrastructure that could keep pace with growth.

Prisma Health won the award based on the success of its multi-layered, comprehensive approach to advancing its technology infrastructure and disaster preparedness while enhancing patient safety and care delivery. Aspects of the project included:

• Strengthening the network infrastructure: Prisma Health implemented a regional redundant network design with modular connectivity to ensure 100% uptime, even in the event of multiple fiber failures. A multi-carrier distributed antenna system was also deployed to ensure uninterrupted cellular coverage in hospitals.
  
  
• Improving workflow in the ED: Different login processes for different equipment pose a challenge in the fast-paced Emergency Department, so Prisma Health's technology team collaborated with frontline staff to redesign workflows and implement a secure "tap-in/tap-out" process. The result was more efficient, secure access to the electronic health record.
  
  
• Enhancing business continuity efforts: Prisma Health reassessed its disaster recovery capabilities and implemented new protocols and tools to provide uninterrupted care during catastrophic outages.

Most healthcare organizations are aware of what they need to do to maintain technical infrastructure and establish emergency backup plans, but not every organization invests in those initiatives and implements them well. Prisma Health did both, and their work was almost immediately tested.

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene swept through the region, ravaging the communities served by the health system. Although widespread outages impacted the region, the proactive infrastructure work led by Prisma Health ensured the hospitals could maintain EMR access, continue providing quality care, and restore full operations faster than most surrounding healthcare systems.

"We are incredibly proud of Prisma Health's technology team for their unwavering commitment to reliable, round-the-clock healthcare delivery," said Daniel Leonard, vice president of technical services at Prisma Health. "Their innovation, imagination, and collaboration with clinical, facility, and management teams have strengthened our infrastructure and workflows over the past five years. This recognition from ECRI reflects not only their technical excellence but also the strong partnerships that prioritize safety, continuity, and seamless transitions throughout our system."

"Prisma Health has demonstrated a system-wide commitment to safe, innovative technology deployment," said Dheerendra Kommala, MD, chief medical officer at ECRI. "Their integration of reliable infrastructure, intelligent access solutions, and rigorous continuity planning have enabled uninterrupted care every day, even during natural disasters. Prisma Health not only protected their patients and clinicians – they established a blueprint for resilience that the entire healthcare community would do well to emulate."

Read more about the award-winning Prisma Health initiative along with details about projects spearheaded by past winners of the Health Technology Excellence Award.

About ECRI

ECRI is an independent, nonprofit organization improving the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of care across all healthcare settings. With a focus on technology evaluation and safety, ECRI is respected and trusted by healthcare leaders and agencies worldwide. For more than fifty-five years, ECRI has built its reputation on integrity and disciplined rigor, with an unwavering commitment to independence and strict conflict-of-interest rules. ECRI is the only organization worldwide to conduct independent medical device evaluations, with labs located in North America and Asia Pacific. ECRI is designated an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a federally certified Patient Safety Organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ECRI acquired The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in 2020 to address one of the most prolific causes of preventable harm in healthcare, medication errors; then acquired The Just Culture Company in 2024 to transform healthcare workplace cultures – thus creating one of the largest healthcare quality and safety entities in the world. Visit www.ecri.org to learn more.

About Prisma Health

Prisma Health is a private nonprofit health company with over 32,000 team members, 19 acute and specialty hospitals, 3,131 licensed beds, 320 practice sites, and more than 5,900 employed and independent clinicians across its clinically integrated inVio Health Network. Each year, Prisma Health serves more than 1.6 million patients in South Carolina and Tennessee. Connect with Prisma Health on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter/X.

SOURCE ECRI