Does the federally sponsored Direct messaging protocol pose an existential threat to vendors of health information exchange software? Time will tell, according to the author of a new market research report on health information exchanges.
Time will tell, according to the author of a new market research report on health information exchanges. But Direct is definitely producing anxiety among firms selling software that's designed to be used in more complex types of health information exchange—the long-sought “query-and-response” style of information swapping that has yet to achieve widespread adoption through the industry despite extended federal efforts.
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A federally chartered special work group with representatives from three federal agencies has submitted its draft recommendations on establishing a regulatory framework for health IT.
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Mostashari
Federal health information technology policymakers plan to establish a voluntary program for the testing and certification of electronic health-record systems used by long-term care, post-acute care and behavioral health providers.
Congress, in drafting legislation creating the EHR incentive program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that helped hospitals and office-based physicians buy tested and certified EHRs, did not include long-term care and behavioral health facilities, even though nearly a third of Medicare patients discharged from acute-care hospitals go to post-acute-care settings.
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There has been significant progress in getting health information technology systems to talk to one another, according to a new study on interoperability by HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The study, “Hospital Electronic Health Information Exchange Grew Substantially in 2008-12,” was published in the August issue of the policy journal Health Affairs. The report was written by five ONC staffers, including the lead author, Michael Furukawa, director of the ONC's Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluate and Modeling, and contributor Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the ONC chief.
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Before there can be patient-generated data, there have to be patients willing and able to provide it and tools to capture, communicate, receive and present it. That's where Dr. Susan Woods comes in.
“My focus is really on the patient's and the caregiver's use of electronic tools and on making value for patients in using these tools,” said Woods, who is the director of patient experience for the Veterans Health Administration.
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Four charitable foundations in healthcare and one in journalism will participate in a $2 million contest to spark innovative uses of healthcare data.
“Health is an area where journalism, open data and public information overlap, giving us a direct, tangible opportunity to help people learn more and make smart choices through the use of technology and data,” Michael Maness, vice president for journalism and media innovation at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said in a news release. The charity is named for the founders of the former Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers.
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Jain
When Dr. Anil Jain was an undergraduate in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, he got a glimpse of his future in medical informatics.
“In many ways, cloud computing is a reminder back to when I was in engineering school,” Jain says. He recalls that students were given access to a slice of the school's mainframe computer. “I'd get to use a supercomputing environment without having to pay for it.”
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Mobile computing devices are becoming almost as much of an essential tool in U.S. physician practices as the exam table, according to a new survey.
Nearly 80% of 300 U.S. practicing physicians in primary care, family and internal medicine that were sampled and surveyed in April said they were using a smartphone in their “day-to-day practice.” Another 61% were using mobile tablets.
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Craig Michael Lie Njie spent a chunk of his life developing an online privacy shield, but when he tried to get his own mother to use it, she wouldn't click on the button. Why?
According to Lie Njie, loading up his software would have meant his mother acknowledging cyber-insecurity as real. Most Americans don't want to know.
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So far, members of a trade group of health information technology developers like some of what they see in a federal health IT safety initiative that focuses on quantifying any adverse impacts their software is having on patients. But these vendors are withholding final judgment until more plan details are unveiled.
On July 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS released its 50-page Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan that creates an infrastructure to collect and analyze data about health IT-related patient safety events.
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So far, members of a trade group of health information technology developers like some of what they see in a federal health IT safety initiative that focuses on quantifying any adverse impacts their software is having on patients. But these vendors are withholding final judgment until more plan details are unveiled.
On July 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS released its 50-page Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan that creates an infrastructure to collect and analyze data about health IT-related patient safety events.
Read more »
