Interoperability

In efforts to guarantee patient access to their lab tests, the nation's largest pharmacies are now promising to adopt the Blue Button personal health record.

Not all HIE products are created equal; some are more equal than others. At least that's according to the findings of a new Black Book Rankings report that names the top performing HIE vendors across five different categories.

Telemedicine, the exchange of medical information between sites via electronic communications, is being used not only by ICUs but also by other hospital departments, home health agencies and private doctors' offices. But skeptics suggest that small ICUs might be able to improve care with less expensive measures.

Last month, the Identity Theft Resource Center produced a survey showing that medical-related identity theft accounted for 43 percent of all identity thefts reported in the United States in 2013. According to HHS, the theft of a computer or other electronic device is involved in more than half of medical-related security breaches.

To all the developers building applications in the cloud that need to comply with HIPAA privacy and security rules: You've just gained a big supporter. Internet behemoth Google recently announced its cloud platform will now be HIPAA-friendly and will support business associate agreements going forward.

A health IT consultant described the "Tower of Babel"-eqsue barrier she encounters coordinating disparate EHR systems to a panel at the Health Innovation Day conference. William Check, CTO at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association responded: "What you just described could have been the cable industries. It's amazing the parallel here."

Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author and New Yorker staffer, likened the change required for healthcare to clear the interoperability hurdle to several events of this generation, "three lessons in culture, framing and consequence," as he put it during a talk Thursday at Health Care Innovation Day in Washington.

Karen DeSalvo, MD, newly appointed national coordinator for health information technology, gave some insight Thursday on how ONC plans to proceed under her leadership. Interoperability will be top priority.

Health networks and physician practices have the most to gain from an interoperable ecosystem and, it follows, the most to lose if it doesn't go right. But one could argue that American patients and taxpayers stand to gain or lose just as much.

The ONC's Health IT Policy Committee's Privacy and Security Tiger Team is calling for public comment on privacy and policy concerns surrounding patients giving access to their health information.