February 17th, 2010 by Robert Connely
I believe that meaningful use (MU) and the continued advances in technology will usher in a wave of disruptive innovations that will ultimately have a significant impact on healthcare costs and quality. MU sets the stage by expanding the definition of an EHR to include modular applications designed to create, maintain, and exchange a limited, standardized data set. Advances in technology like the concepts I’ve been sharing in recent posts, are beginning to interconnect providers in communities across the US. The convergence of these activities is leading to a new model that can be called Health 4.0.
Why Health 4.0? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ehr modules, electronic health record, health 4.0, health information exchange, meaningful use
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January 23rd, 2010 by James K. Lassetter
There has been a lot of discussion about the “demise” of CalRHIO. Perhaps it would be helpful to give an insider’s view of what transpired. I want to be both very clear and very accurate when I say that CalRHIO did not fail, but simply decided to support and transition into the newly formed state governance entity. To better explain why this happened, I think it is important to provide a historical context. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: calrhio, health information exchange
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January 18th, 2010 by MedicityAdmin
Medicity has received questions about the HIE situation in California and the breakup of CalRHIO. The following blog post appeared on HIStalk earlier this morning and contains a message from former CalRHIO CEO Molly Coye that addresses the situation: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: calrhio, health information exchange
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January 6th, 2010 by Robert Connely
Happy New Year! I hope everyone has recovered from those late night “meaningful use” parties.
Continuing the discussion around client-cloud computing, I thought it would be interesting to map how a client-cloud computing system would leverage EHR modules to meet the meaningful use criteria for a certified EHR.
First, the “Top 25” list of functions that an EHR system must perform to be certified: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: client cloud computing, ehr, electronic health record, health information exchange, meaningful use
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December 16th, 2009 by Ashish V. Shah
For some time, service-oriented architecture (SOA) was a hot buzzword in IT as organizations looked to improve reuse and drop overall maintenance costs for their platforms. After an initial honeymoon period, however, SOA took a beating. Some recently went as far as calling SOA dead, especially after initial implementations highlighted struggles around service level management and performance.
With this backlash against SOA, why should service-oriented architecture matter in healthcare today?
The case for SOA can be summarized in three quick points: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: development partners, health information exchange, meaningful use, open platform, soa
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December 2nd, 2009 by Robert Connely
In my last post, I introduced the concept of client-cloud computing as a technology paradigm that stands to advance our thinking about how to build HIEs. This is a model that combines the power of intelligent, distributed client software with the world of cloud computing where applications are made available as Internet services. Today, I would like to dig deeper into the concept of intelligent clients and some of the exciting possibilities that emerge when these two models are combined.
Today’s intelligent clients have advanced greatly from the clients of yore, which evolved from mainframe and client/server computing. Intelligent clients are independent and capable of operating on their own regardless of the state of the Internet connection (i.e., they can continue operation even if the Internet cable is cut). They can interface to local applications like EMRs and PM systems (bi-directionally). They can store and manage data locally without the need for a remote server. They can exchange information directly with other client platforms. They can perform application functions locally.
This level of independence and capability opens up many possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bundled reimbursement, care collaboration, client cloud computing, health information exchange, identity management, patient centered medical home
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November 18th, 2009 by David Coyle
The jury is still out as to what will be included in the official definition of meaningful use when it is finalized in the spring of 2010, but the Office of the National Coordinator has made it clear that meaningful use will, at the very least, encompass the use of EHR technology to perform functionality like ePrescribing; electronic exchange of health information to facilitate care coordination; and quality reporting. Clearly, health information exchange will be an imperative piece of meeting the near-term objective of meaningful use.
But looking beyond 2011, 2013, or 2015 – beyond meaningful use into the broader arena of healthcare reform and evolution – is where I see the vital importance of health information exchange revealing itself. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: accountable care organizations, bundled reimbursement, health information exchange, healthcare reform, meaningful use
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November 11th, 2009 by Ashish V. Shah
USA Today reports this morning that the federal government has only received 38 million of the targeted 200 million doses of the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine for 2009. This lackluster progress means that vaccinating against the virus for a majority of the U.S. population – including the most susceptible: young children and the elderly – is not going to happen this year.
Like with anything in life, when there is a shortfall, the current inventory needs to be prioritized. The tough question is who prioritizes and how long does it take them to get patients informed of the physician’s recommendation to get vaccinated? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: biosurveillance, disease prevention, health information exchange, hie, public health
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November 4th, 2009 by Robert Connely
“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
This old saying is continually relevant in the world of evolving technologies, and something we need to be constantly aware of when planning how to apply technology for private, community, statewide, and national HIEs.
For example, cloud computing is one of those great ideas whose underlying concept has proven successful for decades. The model has evolved from shared computing in the ’70s and ’80s (e.g., Shared Medical Systems) to Application Service Providers (ASP) in the ’90s and now is referred to as cloud computing in the 21st century, but it is basically the same idea of sharing resources and applications to improve price, performance, and resource requirements. Of course, with each generation, improvements in the underlying technology are made, such as the use of service-oriented architectures to enable cloud computing to offer a high degree of modularity and flexibility.
There is this emerging belief that cloud computing is the answer for HIEs of the future. I believe that this is true because we’ve always had the concept of cloud computing. But to see it as a Grand Unification Theory is a bit like the hammer and nail. Cloud computing is great for remotely hosted applications and HIE services like registries, community portals, MPI, RLS, and others. But it is insufficient to accomplish all of the technology needs required of an HIE by itself. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: architecture, client cloud computing, cloud computing, health information exchange
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October 28th, 2009 by David Coyle
While I was digging through some old papers of mine I ran across a grant paper that I wrote as a consultant some 22 years ago. At the time, I was working with a forward-thinking group of geriatrics providers whose ambition was to make care guidelines available across the continuum of care. As I read the words of the grant, I was struck by how close many of the requirements paralleled what we in the health information exchange community are now working to achieve with the NHIN. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: health information exchange, nhin, standards
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