“As I spent time in Washington, D.C., several weeks ago, it was clear that much of the focus in the healthcare IT industry has settled on the secondary use of health data. Talk of health information exchanges (HIEs) was, of course, still the rage, but conversations centered on topics like how to secure data for access by physicians not on the patient’s care team (an authorization discussion), leveraging the NHIN’s CONNECT software (an open-source implementation initially designed to connect the twelve federal agencies), data standardization (to enable reporting and analytics), interoperability standards to achieve meaningful use, and statewide backbones to facilitate exchange at a broad level.”
Article
Robert Connely, The HIE Blog, 7 October 2009
It is a pity to see that this promising title “Don’t forget the primary use” apparently does not leave space to talk about the use of data in relation to the patient. Of course, a physician doing his job (more) properly due to the data available is very important, but using the data to inform the patient and help him make decision is at least as important.