lack of interoperability

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New Report: Top Challenges Facing HHS Includes Harnessing Data

In November 2019 the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a new report, Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing HHS. Divided into six major sections, this report reviews the OIG's observations with respect to financial integrity of HHS programs, value and quality, protecting the health and safety of beneficiaries as well as the public at large, harnessing data to achieve these goals, and working across government. The fifth challenge, "Harnessing Data To Improve Health and Well-Being of Individuals," is particularly foundational. Read More »

Notes on the October Joint Meeting of the Standards and Policy Committee

Today the future of interoperability was discussed and endorsed by a joint meeting of the Standards and Policy Committees. We began with a preamble clearly stating that the roadmap we’re working on is a process not a finished product. Karen DeSalvo, Jacob Reider, Paul Tang and I offered framing comments for the day... Read More »

Open Source Goes Corporate: Can Open Healthcare Be Far Behind?

If you aren't in IT, you may have missed the news that IBM is acquiring Red Hat, a leader in the open source Linux movement, or that, a couple days prior, Microsoft closed on its acquisition of GitHub, a leader in open source software development. Earlier this year Salesforce acquired Mulesoft, and Cloudera and Hortonworks merged; all were other open source leaders. I must confess, I had never heard of some of these companies, but I'm starting to believe what MarketWatch said following the IBM announcement: "open source has truly arrived." What exactly that means, especially for healthcare, I'm not sure, but it's worth exploring. IBM is paying $34b for Red Hat.

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OSEHRA 2015: Zoeticx CEO to Speak during Open Health Panel at the Open Source Summit

Press Release | Zoeticx | July 26, 2015

Thanh Tran, CEO of Zoeticx will speak as a member of the Open Health panel discussion on Wednesday, July 29, at the upcoming OSEHRA Open Source Summit. His participation on the panel will be followed by a more extensive presentation on the topic of “Healthcare Open Access Architecture” to take place during one of the breakout sessions. The OSEHRA Summit, now in its 4th year, has become the leading conference addressing issues of open solutions, open source, collaboration, transparency, and innovation in healthcare information technology. The conference will take place at the Bethesda Marriott North Hotel and Conference Center in Maryland from July 29 to the 31st. Keynote speaker at the conference will be Robert A. McDonald, Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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Pentagon's $11 Billion Healthcare Record System Will Be Obsolete Before It's Even Built

Loren Thompson | Forbes | March 3, 2015

In order to understand why the modernization initiative is doomed to failure, you need only grasp the significance of two key phrases the program office uses in its approach to industry for proposals.  First, it says it is seeking a “state-of-the-market” electronic health record system.  Second, it says whatever it selects will be an “off-the-shelf” product.  In other words, it is seeking to acquire an electronic health record system that already exists in an industry noted for its antiquated approach to the movement of information.

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Plug and Play Healthcare: Open Middleware and the Emergence of a Functional Interoperability Framework

“A middleware architecture has been shown to be the best technological solution for addressing the problem of EHR interoperability. The middleware platform facilitates the transparent, yet secure, access of patient health data, directly from the various databases where it is stored. A server-based middleware framework supporting access to the various patient health data stores allows for a scalable, unified and standardized platform for applications to be developed upon.  The middleware architectural design has been successfully used to link data from multiple databases, irrespective to the database platform or where the database is located,” says Voltz. Read More »

Tech Companies Blew Their Chance with Health Records

Chris Tomlinson | Houston Chronicle | April 10, 2015

Turns out, though, that the tech industry is just as selfish as any other private concern. A new report from the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology finds that instead of innovating, companies developing electronic health records did their best to create expensive systems that were very difficult to share, all in the hope of locking clients into lucrative, long-term contracts. Instead of developing standardized, open source software that would allow the easy transfer of health records from a doctor's office in Houston to an emergency room in Dallas, software developers sold systems that make such a transfer almost impossible if the doctor and hospital don't have the same vendor.

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The VA Waitlist Fiasco: VistA Should Not be Thrown Out With the Bathwater

Without a doubt, the death of American veterans as a result of the VA waitlist debacle is tragic and unacceptable. The Obama administration must move quickly and deliberately to fix the underlying problems and restore faith in the agency. If these issues were common throughout the VA network of hospitals and clinics, it might make sense to consider dramatic, earth-shaking alternatives like moving veterans to private providers and shuttering the VA. But they are not common. Indeed, as Washington Monthly reporter Phillip Longman has documented, the VA’s challenges are regional, not pervasive. Read More »

We've been swindled

Paul Levy | Not Running a Hospital | June 24, 2015

...And the fraud is likely to be compounded.  The next step in the process is a forthcoming Department of Defense procurement of an EHR system to serve the military and its dependents, whether being treated at military healthcare facilities or other facilities in the communities in and around our bases and other military installations. As I understand, there is no language in this multi-billion dollar procurement that would require the vendor chosen to achieve interoperability with those EHRs in community facilities where the government will send its patients--or where they might end up for emergent care...

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WellTrackONE and Zoeticx Demonstrate Interoperability by Integrating Good Samaritan’s EHR System with Indiana HIE

The long awaited road to true healthcare IT system interoperability is being implemented at Good Samaritan in Indiana, enabling the 232-bed community health-care facility to better deliver on its commitment to delivering exceptional patient care.  The system will also enable the hospital to substantially increase their practice’s revenue while containing healthcare system integration costs....The integration is being made possible with Zoeticx’s Patient-Clarity interoperability platform which will integrate WellTrackONE’s Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) patient reports with Indiana’s Health Information Exchange (IHIE) and the hospital’s Allscripts EHR.

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