“One lesson that healthcare learned from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 was that paper medical records, and those on disks and servers, are incredibly vulnerable. Now, in light of hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the value of electronic health records (EHRs), accessible from remote locations, has become crystal clear.
In fact, one health system was able to return to practice without missing a beat just one day after Hurricane Gustav, thanks to its EHR. Results like this reinforce the value of EHRs and lessons learned from previous disasters.”
Article
Tracey Walker, Managed Healthcare Executive, 1 November 2008
Tagged: access, awareness, emergency, interoperability and phr
; posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 8:44 am
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“Reliable identification is essential in e-health and telemedicine applications. This necessitates a secure and trustworthy method of communication and collaboration between parties, which depends on common acceptance. This in turn is related to privacy and ethical matters. Different technologies, including biometrics and RFID, allow high levels of security and safety in identifying both human beings and goods. However, the diffusion of standards relating to identity management in e-health is far from satisfactory. In order to support standardization in e-health, the European Commission funded the BioHealth project. This project has proved to be useful in promoting standards and creating awareness among the stakeholders.”
Abstract
Mario Savastano, Asbjorn Hovsto, Peter Pharow and Bernd Blobel, J Telemed Telecare 2008;14:386-388, doi:10.1258/jtt.2008.007014
Tagged: awareness, biometrics, e health, ethics, europe, identification, privacy, rfid, standards and telemedicine
; posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 7:57 am
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“A UCL (University College London) research team, led by London GP Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, has published its independent evaluation of the first year of the Summary Care Record (SCR) programme. The team found that although the SCR offers real benefits for treating patients in emergency and unscheduled care settings, the ‘”complicated” technical system needs to be refined before being rolled out. Nevertheless, both NHS staff and patients were largely positive or amenable to the programme, with most people valuing the benefits of instant access to medical records over the small risk of data loss or breach.
The SCR programme is an initiative by the English Department of Health to place a summary of key medical details (medication, allergies, known adverse reactions) of every NHS patient on a central database, accessible by NHS staff via a secure virtual network. It is currently being introduced in a number of ‘Early Adopter’ sites across England, of which the UCL team studied four. The year-long evaluation covered areas including: usability, usage and functionality of the SCR; impact and benefits of the SCR; patient access to their own SCR; evaluation of the Public Information Programme and evaluation of the consent/dissent model.
The evaluation team conducted extensive fieldwork within the early adopter Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), immersing themselves in the reality of implementation and usage of the SCR on the ground. The views and experiences of GPs, nurses, patients and the public, practice managers and other clinical and administrative staff using the SCR were captured.”
Report
Greenhalgh T, Stramer K, Bratan T, Byrne E, Russell J, Mohammad Y, Wood G, Hinder S, UCL, 6 May 2008
Tagged: awareness, benefits, consent and summary care records
; posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am
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“The American Health Information Management Association launched a national campaign today to heighten awareness and educate healthcare consumers on the importance of improving the management of their health information with personal health records.
The campaign - designated “It’s HI Time, America!” - encourages Americans to create and maintain comprehensive PHRs that contain the information needed to make important medical decisions. AHIMA will direct its message to caregivers, maturing adults, parents raising children and individuals managing chronic conditions.”
Article
Richard Pizzi, Healthcare IT News, 28 January 2008
Tagged: awareness, health information and phr
; posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
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