If you or your family were injured during a disaster like a hurricane, earthquake or forest fire, wouldn’t you want your health data to be available to first responders and others who are there to provide care? We thought you might, and we are partnering with the State of California to pilot just such a project. Working at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), we have had the opportunity to leverage investments in health information technology to spur innovation in public health and preparedness...
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
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Is Machine Interoperability the Next Unusable Level of Meaningful Use?
As the HIMSS15 extravaganza is getting under way, and every EHR vendor flush with cash from the Meaningful Use bonanza is preparing to take its unusable product to the next level, machine interoperability is shaping up to be the belle of the ball. A simple minded person may be tempted to wonder why people who, for decades, manufactured and sold EHRs that don’t talk to each other, are all of a sudden possessed by interoperability fever. The answer is deceptively simple. After exhausting the artificially created market for EHRs, these powerful captains of industry figured out that extracting rents for machine interoperability is the next big thing.
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Is the US Finally Ready to Get Serious About Biodefense?
Biological and other disaster threats - whether accidental, driven by forces of nature, or intentional - pose fairly grave risks to the United States and the world. Situational awareness has been a conspicuous topic ever since the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scare that followed shortly thereafter. Since then we have experienced numerous disasters: health impacts of major weather events such as hurricanes and earthquakes, new virus outbreaks like Ebola in Africa, raging wildfires on the West Coast (I live in California), and the ever-present threat of pandemic flu which a hundred years ago infected some 500 million people across the globe and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, according to the Center for Disease Control and Preparedness (CDC). But since the initial flurry of public health preparedness funds in the ensuing several years after the 9/11 attacks, this topic has not had a high priority at CDC nor the funding necessary to implement it successfully.
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Joint Commission Issues Sentinel Event Alert On EHR Safety Risks
Safe use of health information technology (health IT) is the focus of a new Sentinel Event Alert released today by The Joint Commission. The new alert examines the contributing factors to sentinel events that are health IT-related and includes suggested solutions to be implemented by health care organizations. It builds on Sentinel Event Alert, Issue 42, issued in 2008, which focused on safely implementing health information and converging technologies. Read More »
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Karen DeSalvo And Malcolm Gladwell To Speak At HCI-DC 2014
The new National Coordinator for Health IT, Dr. Karen DeSalvo and author Malcolm Gladwell have been named keynote speakers for HCI-DC 2014: Igniting an Interoperable Health Care System. The event will be held in Washington, D.C on February 6. Read More »
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Maintaining Health Data Privacy in Precision Medicine Push
As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve and put PHI at risk, precision medicine guidelines need to be updated to account for new health data privacy threats, according to a recent opinion piece published in the Oxford University Press. The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System Senior Counsel Jennifer Kulynych, JD, PhD explained that data re-identification methods are not foolproof, and it can be difficult to determine exactly how individuals’ genomes are being used...
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Major Interoperability Initiative Launched During the Annual Meeting of The Sequoia Project
On December 5, 2019, HLN Consulting, LLC participated in The Sequoia Project's day long annual meeting which was held just outside of Washington, D.C. at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. As a leading healthcare informatics consulting company HLN monitors developments in healthcare interoperability nationally with particular emphasis on the impact to public health agencies and their stakeholders. This conference represented a good opportunity to participate in the start of a major interoperability initiative that will play out over the next several years. In addition to this report, the Sequoia Project posted the proceedings of the meeting online, including the recorded discussions as well as the slides from the presentations. Read More »
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Making Personal Health Data Available During an Emergency
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Meaningful Use of EHRs Stage 2: What to Expect in the Proposed Rules
There will be many blogs and news reports, on Health Affairs Blog and elsewhere, about the very-soon-to-be-released Stage 2 proposed rules on the Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHRs). This report is more impressionistic. Read More »
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Meaningful Use Problems Go Beyond Just Software, Say “Stage 2 Flexibility” Critics
The final rule for meaningful use Stage 2 flexibility, released late on Friday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), is not as popular as the government probably would have liked...
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Meaningful Use Stage 2 NPRM Means New Opportunities for Medical Device and Non-traditional Health IT Vendors
...Meaningful Use Stage 1 was mostly about setting the bare minimum electronic health record functional requirements and pegging a “floor” for data capture; it had many required elements a few optional elements for care providers to utilize (but vendors had to make even the optional functionality available for use). Read More »
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MEDfx CEO Colin Barry Discusses Virtual Lifetime Electronic Records (transcript)
This is the transcript of my recent podcast with MEDfx CEO Colin Barry.
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mHealth Regulatory Coalition Urges FDA To Release Final Apps Guidance
The mHealth Regulatory Coalition (MRC) on June 21 sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urging HHS, through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to publish the final guidance on mobile medical applications (MMA) "as soon as reasonably possible." Read More »
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More Electronic Health Record Systems Than You Imagined
I had no idea. There is simply a horde, a herd, a whole Wild West stampede of electronic health-record systems out there....[Earlier] this month, Jodi Daniel, director of the Office of Policy and Research within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, presented a slide at an Health Information Technology Policy Committee meeting with some health IT market numbers that I found nothing short of astonishing. Read More »
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Mostashari Anticipates 'Big Win' in HIE in 2012
Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the national health IT coordinator, expects health information exchange to ramp up significantly in 2012 because the necessary elements of interoperability will be in place. The health information exchange strategy means finally bringing together the standards, identity authentication certificates, governance for rules of the road, and the availability of directories or digital provider phone books.
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Mostashari Experiences Blue Button In Action
Most everyone in health IT circles has heard about the Blue Button feature to download personal health information. But as Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the national health IT coordinator, found out, you’ve got to see it to appreciate it. Read More »
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