WEDI report focuses on opportunities, challenges of HIT

The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange has issued a report on the state of the art of healthcare information technology focusing on cloud computing, smartphones and other wireless devices and mobile healthcare applications.

The report identifies how today's technology creates new opportunities to improve efficiency in the healthcare system and lower the cost of care. The report also looked at the challenges faced by the industry in applying these new technologies.

More than 200 volunteers from the healthcare industry and government worked on the project, according to Reston, Va.-based WEDI. The workgroup was founded in 1991 by then-HHS Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan and was designated as a health IT adviser to HHS by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Its 1993 recommendations led to inclusion of the “administrative simplification” section of HIPAA, which includes the “transactions and code sets” provisions, an attempt to bring standardization to electronic healthcare transactions.

The new report focus on four areas: patient engagement through improved access to healthcare information; data exchange under emerging healthcare payment models; aligning clinical and administrative information capture and exchange; and innovative models of patient encounters that leverage new—particularly mobile—technology.

“The 2013 WEDI Report and recommendations will serve as the roadmap that will lead to greater efficiency and improved healthcare delivery in the years ahead,” Sullivan said in a news release. He served as the honorary chairman of the WEDI effort on the new report.

One of the report's most exciting target areas was in innovative encounters, said Lisa Gallagher, vice president for technology solutions at the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Gallagher served as an adviser to the WEDI workgroups and executive committee on the report project.

An encounter used to mean a provider being in a room with a patient, Gallagher said. “If you think of the encounters that could be enabled by mobile technology, we have a different model of patient care. It's going to require innovations, it's going to empower patients and really put patients at the center of care.”

Gallagher recommends that healthcare industry leaders use the report's recommendations a guide, “recognizing that it's not the end of the process but only the beginning.” she said. “We'll be reconvening again, maybe every six months or a year, to see what progress is being made.”

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