Anthony Brino
The ONC Health IT Standards Committee relayed their stage 3 recommendations via Beth Israel Deaconess CIO John Halamka, who said meaningful use stage 3 have got to account for standard maturity.
A central part of American hospitals, the intensive care unit (ICU) could benefit greatly from evolving health information technologies, offering clinical decision support, quality analysis and a new foundation for a critical care system changing with an aging patient population. Yet ICU triaging -- prioritizing of the most severe conditions -- has been underutilized and under-encouraged by the federal government, a team of medical researchers argue in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary.
The ONC and NIH are working the EU health agencies to develop international interoperability standards, with the goal of increasing patient access to personal health information globally.
More than 100 ACOs officially started in January, and amid perennial concerns over Medicare spending, federal health officials are hoping to show that ACOs can improve the program and reform care systems.
Deborah Peel, MD, was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst and worked as a psychiatrist in Austin, Texas, for nearly three decades before becoming a privacy activist, founding the group Patient Privacy Rights in 2006 after being appalled by HIPAA's evolution into what she sees as a weak baseline for privacy and security.
In 2013, HIEs may be evolving in regions where there previously wasn't a huge need for information sharing. 2013 is also likely to bring a new focus on HIE interoperability, sustainability and clinical and business value.
As more health organizations use cloud-based IT services, a patient privacy advocacy group is urging HHS to issue guidance on HIPAA and the cloud.
Two months after the launch of the Massachusetts HIE, Laurance Stuntz, director of the MeHI, discusses the HIE's journey so far and the road ahead. Formerly a senior VIP at the healthcare communications company NaviNet and a partner at Computer Science Corporation, Stuntz joined MeHI in May.
Laurance Stuntz, the director of the Massachusetts eHealth Institute, says the HIE is going to be one important part of the Commonwealth's cost-containment efforts.
Northern Ireland's health minister will be in Boston with dozens of other European health leaders this week, and he's hoping to build the province's tech reputation and talking of some of his agency's IT and mobile health initiatives.