Over the past few months, I’ve been in England, China, Denmark, New Zealand, and Canada. Each of them is rethinking their healthcare IT strategy and is not entirely satisfied with past progress. I’m often asked by senior government officials to help harmonize IT strategy at the country level. That I can do. I’m also asked to discuss the US Presidential campaign, but that defies rational explanation. I frequently say that healthcare IT issues are the same all over the world. Here’s a few common observations..
John D. Halamka
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Notes on the August Meeting of the HIT Standards Committee
By John D. Halamka, MD | August 25, 2014
The August HIT Standards Committee meeting focused on the work ahead to accelerate interoperability. It’s no longer about Meaningful Use, it’s about Meaningful healthcare information exchange. I offered my opinion about the work ahead. ONC is in the middle of regulation writing for Meaningful Use Stage 3, so the standards work of the next 10 weeks is not going to be incorporated into the NPRM. Read More »
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Notes on the June Meeting of the HIT Standards Committee
By John D. Halamka, MD | June 18, 2014
The June HIT Standards Committee focused on an update and evaluation of the standards and interoperability framework initiatives, consistent with the overall theme of ONC’s recent reorganization and strategic plan to focus on fewer goals with a greater depth. Steve Posnack, who now leads the ONC Office of Standards and Technology, introduced the topic... Read More »
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On the Road
By John D. Halamka, MD | November 2, 2016
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OSEHRA 2014 Summit Shows the Future for Open Source EHR's— US Government IT Procurement
By Roger A. Maduro | September 20, 2014
The recent 2014 OSEHRA Open Source Summit: Global Collaboration in Healthcare IT, held September 3-5 in Bethesda, MD, was a huge success and clearly marks a watershed moment for open source health information technology (HIT), as well as a transformation in the way that US government agencies procure technology. The Summit featured more than 120 speakers addressing 90 separate sessions over three days. According to Seong K. Mun, President and CEO of OSEHRA, “this Summit demonstrated solid growth in both the depth and breadth of the OSEHRA Community.” Read More »
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OSEHRA 2014: Patricia Abbott Elected to OSEHRA Board
Press Release |
OSEHRA |
September 12, 2014
The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) announced today that Patricia Abbott, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, was elected to the OSEHRA Board of Directors by its members at the 2014 OSEHRA Open Source Summit. Abbott, the first woman and the first nurse elected to the Board of Directors, will begin her three- year term in October, following the departure of founding Director John D. Halamka, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “It has been a great pleasure to serve on the OSEHRA Board during its emergence as a unifying force in the open source community," said Halamka, “and I’m delighted to be succeeded by someone with Dr. Abbott’s clinical and academic experience.”
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Patient Generated Data Goes Mainstream
By John D. Halamka, MD | July 23, 2014
Patient generated healthcare data is the next key frontier in care coordination, population health, and clinical research. Although Beth Israel Deaconess has invested significantly in home care, care management, and telemedicine, it has not yet made the commitment to be a leader in patient generated healthcare data... Read More »
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Reducing My Digital Burden
By John D. Halamka, MD | August 14, 2016
Last weekend, I started a process that some may consider regressive. I began deleting my social media accounts to improve the signal to noise ratio in my life. 10 years ago I wrote about the importance of social media and building networks of colleagues, collaborators and relationships. During that decade our social norms have changed to the point that we walk off cliffs, text while driving, and document every microsecond of our lives on devices that have become the centerpiece of our waking hours. The problem has gotten so profound that Google has introduced artificial intelligence technology to respond to messaging for you - “LOL”, “cute dog”, “a movie at 7pm is great”...
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Rethinking MACRA, a Follow Up by John Halamka
By John D. Halamka, MD | May 17, 2016
In my blog posts, I speak from the heart without a specific political or economic motivation. Although I’ve not written about highly controversial subjects such as religion, gun control, or reproductive policy, some of the topics in my posts can be polarizing. Such as was the case with MACRA. Some agreed with my initial analysis that clinicians will have a hard time translating complex MACRA payment processes into altered clinical behavior. Others felt I was overharsh, negative and inappropriate. It’s never my intent to criticize people, instead I want encourage dialog about ideas. In that spirit, here’s my opinion on how we should evolve from fee for service to pay for value/outcomes...
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Solving the Provider Directory Problem for the Country
By John D. Halamka, MD | September 13, 2015
In many previous posts, I’ve written about the importance of enabling infrastructure to accelerate interoperability. The standards are not the rate limiting step, but the lack of a provider directory, patient identifier, and consent registry are. David McCallie of Cerner has solved the provider directory problem of the country. He downloaded the NPPES national provider database. He created a FHIR-based Application Program Interface to the database by writing 300 lines of Python code and put it live on Amazon Web Services (for $15/month). You can try it yourself here...
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Standards Alone are not the Answer for Interoperability
By John D. Halamka, MD | June 13, 2015
Today I have the honor of presenting a guest blog by David McCallie MD, SVP Medical Informatics, Cerner. He summarizes the collective feeling of the industry about the trajectory of interoperability..."I have been honored to have served on the HIT Standards Committee from its beginning in 2009. As I reach my term limits, I have reflected on what we have all learned over the past six years of helping to define the standards for the certified EHR technology that lies behind the Meaningful Use program...
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The Argonaut Project Charter
By John D. Halamka, MD | December 17, 2014
Yesterday, a group of private sector stakeholders including athenahealth, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cerner, Epic, Intermountain Health, Mayo Clinic, McKesson, MEDITECH, Partners Healthcare System, SMART at Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, and The Advisory Board Company met with HL7 and FHIR leadership to accelerate query/response interoperability under the auspices of ANSI-certified HL7 standards development organization processes.
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The Changes at ONC and Next Steps
By John D. Halamka, MD | November 1, 2014
In 2014, there have been many changes at the Office of the National Coordinator. Although I do not have access to an organizational chart, I believe the leadership of ONC and the changes in 2014 are as follows... Read More »
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The CMS and ONC Final Rules Arrive
By John D. Halamka, MD | October 6, 2015
Steve Posnack from ONC declared today IT Bonanza Day. The Interoperability Roadmap, CMS Meaningful Use Final Rules with a Comment Period (Stage 2 and 3) as well as the ONC 2015 Certification Rule were published today...Here’s my first impression: It remains to be seen how the comment period on the EHR Incentive Programs final rule will be used to align the Meaningful Use program with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) effort. It would not surprise me that the CMS final rules are not really final...
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The Experience of Interoperability Thus Far
By John D. Halamka, MD | January 21, 2015
As I travel across the country and listen to CIOs struggling with mandates from Meaningful Use to ICD-10 to the HIPAA Omnibus rule to the Affordable Care Act, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the burden on IT leaders. All have expressed frustration with the health information exchange (HIE) policies and technologies for care coordination. quality measurement, and patient engagement. As a country, what can we do to reduce this anxiety? Read More »
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The Meaningful Use Stage 2 Finish Line
By John D. Halamka, MD | August 14, 2014
Hospitals across the country have until September 30 to complete their 2014 reporting period for Meaningful Use Stage 2. Recently Ashish Jha and Julia Adler-Milstein published important articles in Health Affairs about the current state of EHRs and Health Information Exchange . What can we learn about the status of Meaningful Use Stage 2 across the country? Read More »
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