Latest News

State-wide Health Information Exchange (HIE) Implementation Activities

Stay abreast of the latest status of the State Health Information Exchanges (SHIE) Program, as reported on the Office  of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) web site. They have posted the figures on the implementation of state-wide health information exchanges (HIE) – for both directed exchange and query-based exchange. You can also find out more about HIE solutions at the upcoming "2013 Health Data Exchange & Interoperability Summit" being held October 30-31, 2013, in Washington D.C. Read More »

DoD Request for Information and Vendor Demos of EHR Systems

It's interesting that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Military Health System decided to announce a request for information and demonstrations of electronic health record (EHR) systems to replace its legacy EHR systems during the government shutdown. The notice about the request for information and vendor demos for a potential replacement of their CHCS/AHLTA systems were quietly posted just a week ago in FedBizOps.Gov and closes today - October 9, 2013. Read More »

Upcoming Conference on Integrative Medicine & Health Information Technology

On October 29-31, 2013, the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine will host the inaugural "International Congress for Clinicians in Complementary and Integrative Medicine" in Chicago, Illinois. Areas of focus include a health futurist perspective on the evolving role of integrative medicine in the evolving healthcare environment; and the use of computers and technology in Integrative Medicine. Read More »

Darwinian Health IT: Only well-designed EHRs will survive

Myopic efforts to meet certification and compliance requirements have added functionality and effort tangential to the care of the patient. Clinicians feel like they are working for the system instead of it working for them. The best EHRs are focused on helping physicians take care of patients, with Meaningful Use and ICD-10 derivative of patient care and documentation. Read More »

VA Clinical Scheduling Contest Winners Announced

The VA just announced the three winners of their innovative Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest. The winners are, in first place, Health eTime by MedRed, LLC, in second place, OH Scheduler by Oroville Hospital, and in third place is the HP Open Community Team Submission which was put together by a team of open source developers led by HP. These were judged to be the top three systems out of a total field of 41 entries submitted by June 13th of this year. Read More »

Major Upcoming Open Source & Health IT Conferences – October 2013

There are a number of major upcoming conferences and events related to Open Source & Health Information Technology (HIT) our readers at Open Health News (OHN) might want to follow or attend over this next month. For example: Read More »

VistA Is A Rival to Epic and Cerner in Major Deployments of EHR Systems

According to a recent article in Healthcare IT News, Intermountain Healthcare has just signed a multi-year contract to deploy Cerner electronic health record (EHR) systems. The article claims that "only two companies – Epic and Cerner – seem to be in competition for the large and complex deployments."  However, there is a third option that constantly goes unrecognized - the widespread deployment and use of the world reknowned 'open source' VistA system by large scale healthcare provider organizations in the U.S. and overseas. Read More »

Thailand's 'open source' Hospital OS now in hundreds of facilities across Asia

Dr. Kongkiat Kespechara is the inaugural speaker for the Research Triangle Park's Global Vision Forum. An MD, software developer, healthcare IT visionary and agricultural pioneer, Dr. Kespechara promotes and uses the 'open source' Hospital OS software platform to enable small, rural hospitals around the world to provide improved health care services and make more effective use of the severely limited financial and human resources at their disposal.

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AmericanEHRPartners Surveys of Clinician Satisfaction with Health IT & EHR Solutions

AmericanEHR Partners is a free online resource designed to aid the medical community with the selection, implementation, and effective use of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health record (EHR) solutions. If you are in the market looking for an EHR system, you might really want to check out their web site and their survey results on the clinician satisfaction with EHR systems. Surprising many,  the 'open source' VistA system, originally developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the leader in EHR usability by a clear margin. Read More »

HCCI Releases Latest 'Health Care Cost & Utilization Report'

The 2012 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report is the third report of the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). The report, just released in September 2013, summarizes national health care spending trends among individuals younger than age 65 who were covered by employer-sponsored health insurance. This  report tracks spending from 2009 to 2012 and highlights the slowdown of health care costs in the U.S. observed over the past several years. Read More »