LifeCOMM: Will the Newest Personal Health Information Platform Play Nicely with Google and Microsoft?

“It looks like 2009 will be the year that LifeCOMM finally makes its debut!
We’ve been hearing dribs and drabs about LifeCOMM for a long time. I remember Don Jones, VP Business Development for Qualcomm, first talking about plans for LifeCOMM at the Healthcare Unbound conference in 2005.
While we await final details, in this discussion I’d like to:
* Place LifeCOMM in the same category with the other personal health information (PHI) platforms — Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Dossia
* Ask a central question about how LifeCOMM will play in this new ecosystem: Will LifeCOMM exchange patient data with Google Health, HealthVault and Dossia?  Or will it be a closed platform, more akin to an iPhone?
These are complex issues, but I’ll try to explain things in plain old English.”
Article
Vince Kuraitis, Center for Connected Health, 18 November 2008

Standardized e-records part of Stark’s health agenda

“In outlining his healthcare agenda for 2009, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said one of his goals is to promote widespread use of health information technology.”
Article
Jennifer Lubell, Modern Healthcare, 11 November 2008

Why We Need 1,170 Codes for Angioplasty

“Government regulators are expected soon to overhaul the aging coding system that doctors and hospitals use to bill insurers — a switch that many in health care say is necessary, but that could initially cause headaches for consumers and their doctors.”
Article
Jane Zhang, The Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2008

ICD-10 Coding, is this a reality or a myth at present?

“I am sure we are all in agreement that the new codes will allow for a better reporting system, but let’s first take a look at today and what is needed for a successful roll out, first off, money, something everyone seems to be running short of today.
Second, is education, doctors, medical staff, etc. will need to be trained on how to use the new coding system.  Yes we have all seen the reports and information on the web, but that doesn’t make much difference until the actual day comes to where the codes are  implemented.  The system is using a new group of algorithms, in other words, formulas and to roll out a system that millions will be required to use without adequate training would be a shame.”
Article
The Medical Quack, 11 November 2008

Magical Thinking in Implementing Healthcare IT

“There was a great article published in the Health Affairs Journal by Carol Diamond from the Markle foundation - “Health Information technology: a few years of magical thinking”.
The concept of magical thinking in this context was that implementers must resist the concept where this notion that ..isolated work on technology will transform our broken system…Another tempting and related notion suggests that a lack of technical standards is the main barrier to health IT adoption..”
Article
Nick van Terheyden, Accelerating Adoption of Healthcare IT, 11 November 2008

Please : don’t widen the jab between health informatics people and health care systems users.

“I am attending now to Healthcare quality management diploma , yesterday was quite simple seminar about Hospital Information system , however , the instructor fails to convince me that HL7 is different topic than Health Information system . and Our attender don’t know HL7 and include it in HIS ( health information system cause its more technical more than summary for users ).”
Article
Goomedic, 2 November 208

Call for common e-health standards

“A new study advocates the development of a common strategy and roadmap for e-health standards development, to support interoperability and the adoption of electronic patient records.”
Article
e-Health Europe, 3 November 2008

ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED, a guest blog

“Knowing that yesterday’s blog about ICD-10 would raise questions about how HITSP will incorporate ICD-10 into its future work products as well as the role of SNOMED verses ICD-10 as a clinical vocabulary, I asked one of our HITSP Technical Committee Co-chairs to give me his perspective. Jamie Ferguson leads standards efforts for Kaiser and he gave me his permission to publish his personal thoughts on ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED, which provide helpful background about the issues.”
Article
John Halamka, Life as a Healthcare CIO, 30 October 2008

AHIMA, AHA back move to ICD-10 as other groups cite high costs

“The Advance Medical Technology Association, American Hospital Association and  American Health Information Management Association urged Congress in a letter Tuesday not to delay adoption of the new ICD-10 diagnosis and coding system.”
Article
Diana Manos, Healthcare IT News, 29 October 2008

ICT Standards in the Health Sector: Current Situation and Prospects

“This new study about ICT standards in the health sector by empirica provides a structured overview of eHealth standards development and uptake in a European context, paying special attention to standards for electronic health records. The study was commissioned by the European Commission’s Directorate General Enterprise and Industry and explores the current status of ICT health standardisation processes and their future potential.”
Report
European Commission, DG Enterprise & Industry
(thanks to eHealthNews.eu)

E-health is on its way

“Health Department secretary Jane Halton says work on basic e-health standards is nearing completion.
Ms Halton told a Senate Estimates committee that the “nerd-relevant things which the public do not have any interest in but which are needed to make the system workable” were now getting “pretty close”.
The Health Department was working towards the first version of a universal health record, which would be available in the short to mid-term.”
Article
Karen Dearne, Australian IT, 28 October 2008

AHIMA Reverses ICD-10 Position, Asks HHS for One More Year

“The American Health Information Management Association has reversed its support of HHS’ proposed timeline for ICD-10 code set adoption and now is asking for an additional year to make the transition, Modern Healthcare reports.”
Article
iHealthBeat, 27 October 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

DH wants ISO equivalent for health information

“The Department of Health is looking for an organisation to run a scheme to accredit health and social care information in England.
It has issued a tender for a “fully managed service” to apply a national health and social information standard to information production systems. It hopes this will do for them “what ISO did for business management systems”.”
Article
Lyn Whitfield, e-Health Insider Primary Care, 24 October 2008

Disease notification heads for standardization

“State epidemiologists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are on their way to creating a national standard list of health conditions that public health authorities should be notified about.”
Article
Nancy Ferris, Government Health IT, 23 October 2008

AHA, GPO onboard for ICD-10 implementation

“The American Hospital Association and Premier joined the American Health Information Management Association in supporting HHS’ proposal to upgrade the International Classification of Diseases coding system, saying the codes bring with them enhanced information technology and patient safety.”
Article
Jean DerGurahian, Modern Healthcare, 22 October 2008

Standards set for the structure of medical records

“Profession-wide standards for medical records in hospitals have been agreed for the first time.
The standards, developed by the Royal College of Physicians and NHS Connecting for Health, and backed by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, set out the structure of the clinical content doctors should record on admission, at handover, at out of hours handover and at discharge.”
Article
e-Health Insider, 23 October 2008

A nice reminder why I did it in the first place, but where is the patient?

On September 8 it was 4 years ago that I founded ICMCC, supported by my first, visionary board members. Medical and care ICT was something I had stumbled upon and knew little about in those days.
After the first 2 years, September 2006, we had a final definition of the word compunetics, thus being the only global organisation dealing with patient-related ICT. Unfortunately, by that time my mentor and ICMCC co-founder Swamy Laxminarayan had passed away and I was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of Non-Hodgkin.
During the past 2 years, ICMCC has developped itself. Our newspage, with an average of 6,000 unique visitors per month, has become an important source of information. Our Record Access Portal is still the only of it’s kind on the subject. Compunetics as a discipline is slowly entering other areas (e.g. behavioural compunetics), our annual conferences have become important meeting points, our proceedings are considered outstanding publications.

However, when you go through the emotional roller coaster that seems to be more or less obligatory after major treatment for a major kind of cancer, it is nice to read an article that reminds you of why you started it all in the first place. Prescription for change, from professor Amar Gupta, published in the Wall Street Journal on 20 October 2008, is such an article.

“In the future, there will be three often overlapping modes of delivering health-care services: services performed in person by humans, services that can be performed by people at a remote location, and services performed by computers without direct human involvement. Offshore outsourcing in combination with a 24-hour work cycle will be appropriate when certain conditions are met — mainly, if the information involved in the task can be digitized, and if workers at different sites can do their jobs independently from one another.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Standards - Why Should Physicians Care?

“Information is immediate. I am publishing this posting directly from my cell phone using email. This is a process called moblogging and could not take place if there were no standards.
Similarly I could not view lab results in my EMR system if not for standards, or transfer clinical data between EMRs or send prescriptions directly from the EMR to pharmacies… and so it goes on.”
Article
Alan Brookstone, Canadian EMR, 20 October 2008

Identity-management factors in e-health and telemedicine applications

“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

Technology: The Road to EMR Interoperability

“About two-thirds of the world agrees that driving on the right side of the road is the, er, right side. But in times past, people generally took to the left. Why? Because if you are on the left, you can easily use your right hand to draw your sword against an approaching enemy, and you can mount your horse from the road shoulder, rather than in oncoming traffic (and you won’t be impeded by your left-hanging sword either).”
Article
Shirley Grace, Physicians Practice, 16 October 2008

‘When’ is critical to driving the switch to ICD-10, says CMS chief

“Be serious about the date.”
That’s the advice of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service Acting Administrator Kerry Weems, when asked Tuesday about how CMS could help drive the conversion of healthcare diagnostic and billing codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 15 October 2008

ICD-10 Timeline Opponents Cite Costs

“Seeking a delay in implementation of the new ICD-10 code sets for health care claims, a coalition of organizations that includes the Medical Group Management Association contends the codes would be too costly to adopt quickly. The federal government has proposed implementing the codes by October 2011, a deadline the coalition describes as unworkable and expensive.”
Article
Health Data Management, 14 October 2008

Time to swallow ICD-10 pill, say AHIMA leaders

“The American Health Information Management Association leadership wants to be clear: Even though it will cost millions of dollars and the process is likely to be disruptive, U.S. healthcare must embrace a new, expanded code for diagnostics and billing.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 14 October 2008

Glen Tullman on the Merger of Allscripts and Misys Healthcare

“This morning we announced that the merger of Allscripts and Misys Healthcare has been finalized, creating a new company with a client base of nearly one out of every three physicians and one of every five hospitals, as well as thousands of post-acute organizations. Clearly, this is a great opportunity for the company and for our shareholders.”
Article
Glenn Tullman, HisTalk, 13 October 2008

Group to Build Privacy Data Standards

“OASIS, a Boston-based international consortium that develops e-business standards, has formed a technical committee to standardize how health care providers and payers exchange privacy policies, consent directives and authorizations. The goal is to have standard formats for the exchange of this data to further interoperability of information systems.”
Article
Health Data Management, 9 October 2008

Four Challenges in Personalized Medicine

“Personalized medicine has just begun to alter health care in fundamental and profound ways. Genetic tests have already become mainstream practice for some cancers in identifying treatment strategies. And as an indication of what the future might hold, genetic analyses indicate that asthma, hypertension and Alzheimer�s have many genes in common. But before we can take full advantage of available genetic information, there are four factors we need to address: the electronic health record, reimbursement, privacy practices, and provider and patient education. These are in addition to the progress in medical science needed to understand the specifics of the relationships among our genome, the environment and our health.”
Article
John Glaser, HHNMostWired, 1 October 2008

Standards Collaborative

“Standards facilitate information exchange and are a critical foundation for an interoperable electronic health record (iEHR).
They create the opportunity for future cost reduction as systems converge on pan-Canadian and international standards. But more importantly, common data and communication standards support timely, appropriate diagnosis and treatment and improve planning and coordination of care. In addition, standards can reduce medical error and increase patient safety. The following clinical scenario demonstrates how standards contribute to the safety, quality and efficiency of patient care.”
Catalogue
Canada Health Infoway, September 2008

EFMI STC 2008 - day 1 - health records and ubiquitous computing

“In sessions addressing the general theme of �health records�, several speakers gave varying perspectives based in their personal experiences of using and/or developing open source health record systems.� Firstly, Rolf Englebrecht covered his experience of free and open source electronic health records. He looked first at Mycare2x (http://www.hccgmbh.com/), based on Care2x, which was developed as a supposed open source solution. Designed for hospitals with specialised units, it is adaptable to ambulatory care � the requirements are defined by user cases (scenarios). But he and colleagues encountered problems in relation to its use, and did not believe it was fully open source.”
Article
Peter, hi-blogs.info, 25 September 2008

�Speech recognition can bring standardization� (VoiceIt Interview)

“From a tool that was once predominantly used by radiologists, speech recognition is now enjoying much wider usage. All over Europe, hospitals and even regional networks are introducing the technology in order to improve the documentation workflow. According to Marcel Wassink, Managing Director of Philips Speech Recognition Systems, and Robert Thornton, the company�s Commercial Director, speech recognition could also be used as a vehicle to support cross-border interoperability in Europe.”
Article
HealthTech Wire, 24 September 2008