Confessions of a Physician EMR Champion

“Starting this month and continuing for the next year or so, I’ll be presenting a standard talk to physician audiences entitled “Confessions of a Physician EMR Champion,” subtitled “A Conversation with American Physicians About How to Save Medicine in the Age of Information.”
Article
David Kibbe, The Health Care Blog, 10 November 2008

Electronic Medical Records

“Shari Roan of the Los Angeles Times thinks that “[i]f ever a case was made for electronic health records, perhaps this is it.” The reason? A Canadian study of over 3,000 patients on the subject of continuity of care and patient/doctor communication. The primary finding of that study is that when tracking records, only 22% of them are available between visits to two or more health care providers. That’s roughly one fifth; not much continuity in the care there.”
Article
George Williams, Health Care Reform Now!, 5 November 2008

CCHIT Should Support BOTH the HL7 CCD and the ASTM CCR for PHRs.

“The federal government sponsored Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT ) is undertaking a certification process for personal health records (PHRs). The CCHIT PHR Work Group has invited public comment on the First Draft of the PHR Certification Criteria.”
Article
Vince Kuraitis, e-CareManagement blog, 24 October 2008

Google Health: Is It Good For You?

“Slowly but surely, using the Internet for your health needs is becoming as mainstream as shopping on the web: no longer futuristic, but is it for everyone?  And perhaps more importantly, are mainstream commercial health platforms from companies like Google and Microsoft really useful for people with specific chronic illnesses?  I thought it would be interesting to hear their side of the story.
So please welcome Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Manager for Google Health, whom I was lucky enough to catch up with for an interview last week.”
Article
Amy Tenderich, The Health Care Blog, 7 October 2008

Now Reading: Patients’ attitudes to the summary care record and HealthSpace: qualitative study

“The work is a qualitative study of attitudes of a group of patients representative of low health literacy, “potentially stigmatising conditions,” or difficulties in accessing health care regarding the National Health Service’ Shared Care Record (SCR), which appears similar to our Continuity of Care Record. It currently has medications, allergies, and adverse reactions, and is scheduled to include a minimum data set. Also discussed with the participants was the HealthSpace, which is a “personal health organizer available via the Internet,” so my guess is, similar to what we call a personal health record.”
Article
Ted Eytan MD, 2 October 2008

Commission certifies outpatient EHR systems

“The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology this week listed the first vendors certified under the organization’s 2008 criteria for ambulatory electronic health record products.”
Article
John Moore, Government Health IT, 1 October 2008

Cell Phone App to Link to HealthVault

“Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based AllOne Health Group Inc. will integrate its AllOne Mobile software with the HealthVault initiative of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. This will enable consumers to access and transmit their personal health information using cell phones and smart phones.”
Article
Health Data Management, 22 September 2008

HIEs Exchange Data in NHIN Test

“MedPlus has completed a test of patient data sharing among health information exchanges as part of the Nationwide Health Information Network’s trial implementations core content test.”
Article
Health Data Management, 19 September 2008

Integrated Community EHR

“This is a Getting Started resources discussing Community Electronic Health Records.
This discussion between Robert Gleeman and Mark Anderson, CEO of the AC Group, Inc. discussing Integrated Community Exchange or an Integrated Community EHR. This interview is also provided as a written transcription below.
Article
Nick Harrington, EMRUpdate, 3 September 2008

Meeting the Requirements of Project HealthDesign: Comparative Analysis with Respect to Existing and Emerging Clinical Data Standards and Commercial PHR Data Repositories

“Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), in collaboration with the California HealthCare Foundation, Project HealthDesign is a $5 million national program of PHR systems. Administered by a national program office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Project HealthDesign’s goal is to design and test a variety of PHR tools and applications that work together to help people achieve their various and specific health goals in an integrated fashion.
The program is supported by the Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, which funds innovative projects that can lead to breakthrough improvements in the future of health and health care.”
Report
Sujansky & Associates, LLC, Project HealthDesign, August 2008

HIMSS Analytics data shows small EMR advance, up-and-coming

“The analytics division of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has released figures on the budgets and technology adoption of U.S. hospitals, showing slightly increasing advancement of electronic medical record (EMR) capabilities and other technology trends.”
Article
Jason Stitt, WTN News, 30 July 2008

Continuity of Care Document for Clinical Data Exchange

“HL7 Basics. Prior to the approval of the Continuity of Care Document (CCD) as an ANSI Standard in 2007, electronic clinical document exchange could utilize one of two formats: HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) or ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR). In an effort to combine the two closely related formats, the Continuity of Care Document was created.”
Article
Elizabeth Armenta, Neotool, 29 July 2008

Again with the Standards Thing

“David Cerino (General Manager for HealthVault) told me a funny story the other day. He was on a panel at the (very cool, I was told) Healthcare Unbound conference with folks from Dossia and Google, and the conversation turned, as it often does, to “standards.” Jerry Lin spoke to the decision to use a modified CCR as the underpinnings of the Google product, and then the moderator turned to David and asked him why HealthVault chose to support the CCD instead.
Of course, David responded that there must be some misunderstanding, because HealthVault supports both the CCR and the CCD — that our approach is to be as inclusive as possible in order to create a comprehensive record. To which the moderator responded (I like to imagine a dramatic courtroom flourish at this point) — “that’s not what David Kibbe says!”
Article
Sean Nolan, Family Health Guy, 13 July 2008

What I learned about CCR, Part I

“This is a bit overdue for me given that I learned what I learned about CCR at the ASTM Workshop in May, 2008, conducted by David Kibbe, MD, MBA, and Steven Waldren, MD. I think what I learned is important for supporting patient-centered HIT, so I’m putting my summary here. A reminder that the beauty of Web 2.0 is that nothing is ever finished - feel free to clarify or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong.”
Article
Ted Eytan, 27 June 2008

Untangling the electronic health data exchange

“The purpose of this post is to help a non-technical audience untangle some of the confusion regarding health data exchange standards, and particularly come to a better understanding of the similarities and  differences between the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard and the CDA Continuity of Care Document (CCD). But what I’m most interested in is getting beyond the technical, political, or economic positions and interests of the proponents of any particular standard to arrive at some principles that demonstrate in plain language what we are trying to achieve by using such standards in the first place.”
Article
David Kibbe, The Health Care Blog, 18 June 2008

Cerner Disses Google Health. Surprised?

“The real question in all of this is how long will it take for Cerner’s customers to realize that private and proprietary network architectures are not in their best business or clinical interests, and that not being able to exchange health data with consumers through Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault means that the hospital will be isolated and distanced from its core customers — doctors and patients.”
Article
e-CareManagement blog, Vince Kuraitis, 1 June 2008

Google Offers Consumers Online Health Record Access

” Minimal Immediate Impact Expected for FPs.
Google Inc., familiar to millions of people around the globe as an Internet search vehicle, recently launched a Web-based health information service called Google Health that allows consumers to create online health accounts they can use to collect and store their personal health information.”
Article
Sheri Porter, AAFP News, 28 May 2008

TEPR Predicts Cell Phone PHRs

“Could the cell phone succeed where grand plans for regional health information organizations (RHIOs) so far have failed? Could it be the format that convinces millions of consumers to adopt and maintain personal health records (PHRs) after smart cards, USB drives, and Web sites have elicited a profound yawn from the public?”
Article
Neil Versel, Digital HealthCare & Productivity, 20 May 2008

Decision Support Service Providers

“I’ve recently written about decision support and speculated on the ways we can transform data to information to knowledge to wisdom.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen a convergence of emerging ideas that suggest a new path forward for decision support. Application Service Providers offer remotely hosted, high value Software as a Service applications at low cost. I believe we need Decision Support Service Providers (DSSP), offering remotely hosted, low cost knowledge services to support the increasing need for evidence-based clinical decision making.”
Article
John Halamka, Life as a Healthcare CIO, 30 April 2008

Tommy Thompson, others set forth model for telephone consults

“Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and other healthcare leaders are calling for establishing standards that would guide telephone consultations between doctors and patients.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 21 April 2008

HealthVault: Abusing vs Implementing Standards

“Microsoft, of all the companies that might consider creating a PHR, is especially problematic. Microsoft has a long history of standards abuse.
Lets consider a parallel issue to the “personal health record”, personal email. I use gmail and have used yahoo mail in the past, but for this example lets pretend that I used Hotmail, a Microsoft Product. Hotmail users trust Microsoft to protect and store potentially sensitive personal email data. I currently have at least a gigabyte of personal messages on my mail account. At this rate I will have at least 100 gigs of messages assuming I die of old age. What if my wife (who will likely outlive me given that she is younger and averse to simple sugars, cholesterol, sodium and saturated fats in a way that I am not) wanted to ensure that my emails survived Microsoft’s eventual demise? After inheriting my password, my wife could download everything via Hotmail’s POP3 service. She could download my emails to a proprietary package like Outlook, or better yet, a GPL email application. She could transfer them to another service that she trusted, like gmail.”
Article
Fred Trotter, 21 October 2007

CCR Exchange: Building a Patient-Driven Web-Based Healthcare Community Around an Emerging Personal Health Record Standard

Steve Chi-Hung Lu
CCR Exchange, Inc., USA

Abstract.

This document demonstrates how we use open source software in building an Internet healthcare community around an emerging Personal Health Record standard called Continuity of Care Record (CCR) format, and how members of the community can share healthcare information securely and efficiently while retaining total privacy.