personal health record (PHR)

See the following -

Number of DirectTrust Users, Transactions, and Addresses Continue to Grow

Press Release | DirectTrust | May 12, 2016

DirectTrust today announced continued steady growth in the number of Direct exchange users, addresses and transactions. The organization also announced the addition of eight new members since the beginning of the year.,,According to end of first quarter 2016 metrics, the number of health care organizations served by DirectTrust health information service providers (HISPs) and engaged in Direct exchange increased 46% to more than 58,000, compared with the same time last year.

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Open Source Immunization Forecaster Updated to Support Pfizer COVID Vaccine

Press Release | HLN Consulting | December 16, 2020

On December 15, 2020, HLN released a new version (v1.26.2) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) in support of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. ICE is a state-of-the-art open source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR), and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems. Version 1.26.2 includes support for new COVID-19 Vaccine Group (with the Pfizer vaccine only). A subsequent release, coming soon, will likely add support for the Moderna vaccine. Read More »

Patients Take Control Of Their Medical Exam Records

Press Release | Radiological Society of North America | December 1, 2014

Patients value direct, independent access to their medical exams, according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)...

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Report on the ONC 2017 Technical Interoperability Forum

Last week I attended with my colleague Mike Berry the ONC 2017 Technical Interoperability Forum. This meeting was convened under the 21st Century Cures Act passed by Congress in late 2016. Several hundred participants attended a series of panel presentations and discussions. The forum took place over one-and-a-half-days. The forum covered a variety of topics related to interoperability, including discussion of the business case for interoperability, semantics, national networks, and application programming interfaces (APIs). In many ways the speakers were “the usual suspects” involved in national networks, standards development, and HIE planning and implementation.

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The Meaningful Use Stage 2 Finish Line

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 »

The ONC 10 Year Vision

On June 5th 2014, ONC released  “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: a 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure." The plan is divided in 3 year goals, 6 year goals, and 10 year goals. Five specific tactics support the strategies. Below is a summary of the report and a few comments from my Massachusetts experience that support the reasonableness of the ONC goals.

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Tolven-The “Unified Platform” that Delivers All-in-One EHR/PHR/HIE

It is hard to miss the fact that the healthcare industry in the United States and other countries are finding that their existing health IT solutions are not interoperable and are simply unable to distribute, or even acquire, critical patient information. There are two fundamental approaches to fixing this problem. First try to bolt on capabilities that will create kludge systems that have partial interoperability capabilities, or start from scratch with a fully unified platform that has all the interoperability capabilities built-in from the ground up. That would be the Tolven Platform, and that is what this article examines. Read More »

U.S., U.K. to collaborate on health IT, data projects

Joe Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 24, 2014

HHS and health authorities in the United Kingdom agreed to collaborate on a broad scope of health information technology and health data projects and practices. Read More »

US and UK working to strengthen use of health IT for better patient care

Press Release | US Department of Health and Human Services | January 23, 2014

As the use of health information technology (health IT) grows in both the United States and the United Kingdom, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt today signed a bi-lateral agreement for the use and sharing of health IT information and tools. The agreement strengthens efforts to cultivate and increase the use of health IT tools and information designed to help improve the quality and efficiency of the delivery of health care in both countries.

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VA’s PHR And Portal Not Reaching High-Priority Vets

Greg Slabodkin | HealthData Management | December 15, 2014

Though millions of U.S. veterans have registered for the My HealtheVet personal health record and patient portal developed by the Veterans Health Administration, opportunities are being missed for those with specific medical conditions that require intensive treatment and self-management...

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Where did the issue of health data exchange disappear to?

There has been extensive talk about the scandals at the VA and remedies for them, including the political and financial ramifications of partial privatization. Republicans have suggested it for some time, but for the solution to be picked up by socialist Independent Senator Bernie Sanders clinches the matter. What no one has pointed out yet, however–and what makes this development relevant to the Datapalooza–is that such a reform will make the free flow of patient information between providers more crucial than ever. Read More »

Will PHIEs Lead the Consumer Medical Record Revolution and Bridge the Gap Between Personal Health Records and EHRs?

It has only been about two generations since traveling medicine shows were common forums for medical information. Phony research and medical claims were used to back up the sale of all kinds of dubious medicines. Potential patients had no real method to determine what was true or false, let alone know what their real medical issues were. Healthcare has come a long way since those times, but similar to the lack of knowing the compositions of past medical concoctions and what ailed them, today’s digital age patients still don’t know what is in their medical records. They need transparency, not secret hospital –vendor contracts and data blocking, like the practices being questioned by the New York Times. One patient, Regina Holliday resorts to using art to bring awareness to the lack of patient’s access to their own medical records.

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Will “Digital Fingerprint” Forensics Thwart the Data Thieves Lurking in Hospital EHR Corridors?

As Halloween approaches, the usual spate of horror movies will intrigue audiences across the US, replete with slashers named Jason or Freddie running amuck in the corridors of all too easily accessible hospitals. They grab a hospital gown and the zombies fit right in.  While this is just a movie you can turn off, the real horror of patient data theft can follow you...Unfortunately, this horror movie scenario is similar to how data thefts often occur at medical facilities. In 2015, the healthcare industry was one of the top three hardest hit industries with serious data breaches and major attacks, along with government and manufacturers. Packed with a wealth of exploitable information such as credit card data, email addresses, Social Security numbers, employment information and medical history records, much of which will remain valid for years, if not decades and fetch a high price on the black market.

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ZibdyHealth offers a Simple and Secure Way to Consolidate and Manage Health Records

Press Release | ZibdyHealth | July 29, 2015

Zibdy, Inc. announces the launch of their secure and free DIY tool within ZibdyHealth application to consolidate medical records (http://www.zibdy.com) using Microsoft Azure. Following the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Zibdy, Inc. has announced that their platform – ZibdyHealth – addresses and provides a solution to a key goal of the ACA and HITECH act – consolidation and exchange of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Given that patients often have records located in 5 or 6 patient portals, medical record consolidation is an important challenge which ZibdyHealth has now addressed in their free application.

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