News Clips
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce Issue Joint Statement Making Commitment to Open Source Healthcare Interoperability
Interoperability is an overlapping set of technical and policy challenges, from data access to common data models to information exchange to workflow integration – and these challenges often pose a barrier to healthcare innovation. Microsoft has been engaged for many years on developing best practices for interoperability across industries. Today, as health IT community leaders get together at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference here in Washington, DC, we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft has joined with Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce in support of healthcare interoperability...
Tech Industry Pledges to Improve Healthcare Through Open Source Health IT
Today, ITI President and CEO Dean Garfield and several ITI member companies participated in the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference at the White House where they announced their commitment to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI...“Today’s announcement will be a catalyst to creating better health outcomes for patients at a lower cost,” said ITI president and CEO Dean Garfield. “As transformative technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence continue to advance, it is important that we work towards creating partnerships that embrace open standards and interoperability.
Major Upgrade to Innovative Open Source Immunization Forecaster Released
Innovative open source software, originally developed for public health, is freely available to EHR and PHR systems to support clinical decision support for immunizations...ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems...HLN will be presenting this new version this week at the annual meeting of the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) and week of August 20 at the CDC Public Health Informatics Conference Read More »
Wagner Foundation Donates $15 Million to Partners In Health for Hi Tech Healthcare Projects
The Wagner Foundation, a private Boston-based foundation, announced today that it is supporting international medical charity Partners In Health with a $15 million grant. The award represents the largest donation to any entity in the Wagner Foundation’s 13-year history, and will enable Partners In Health to launch a groundbreaking initiative to improve the health of impoverished people, especially women and children, in 10 countries around the world....By supporting data infrastructure and expertise, Partners In Health and the Wagner Foundation are also eager to show that long-term investments in public healthcare systems, not just disaster or emergency responses, produce the best outcomes for patients, families, and communities.
2018 OSEHRA Leadership Award Recipients Recognized
OSEHRA recently announced this year’s 2018 Leadership Award recipients during our 7th Annual Open Source Summit. The OSEHRA community chose to honor four distinguished individuals based on their outstanding achievements in health information technology and contributions to innovative health care. Awardees were selected via a community nomination and election process. We would like to extend a thank you to the 2018 Awards Committee for its due diligence and commitment to the community. The Committee was co-chaired by Dr. Jack Taylor of InforMD, Inc. and Keith McCall of KRM Associates, Inc.
DSS and HLN Consulting Partner to Offer Enhanced Immunization Forecasting Solution
Document Storage Systems, Inc. (DSS), a leading provider of health information technology (HIT) solutions for federal, private and public healthcare organizations, announced that it has partnered with HLN Consulting to offer an enhanced forecasting solution that provides clinical decision support (CDS) for immunizations. HLN Consulting’s open source Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now interfaced with the DSS Immunization Dashboard (iDB), to bring patient-specific immunization forecasting to the provider without an interface to a registry. iDB provides a visualization of the patient’s historical record from the treating facility, as well as information from the Immunization Registry.
OSEHRA Prepares for Most Diverse Summit to Date
This year's three-day OSEHRA Open Source Summit promises to be the most diverse ever, highlighting open source initiatives across a dozen Federal and State agencies, and showcasing industry progress in key areas such as emerging hybrid proprietary/open source interoperability solutions and synthetic patient data generation...This year's agenda includes a combination of engaging track sessions, town-hall discussion, and plenary events. The content will be exceptionally diverse, including: An interoperability platform demonstration drawing healthcare data from multiple health record systems; A demonstration of synthetic patient data generation, including the first public demonstration of tailored synthetic data being loaded into the open source VistA Electronic Health Record (EHR) via a new open source data loader...
CCHF Unveils Book Warning of "the Dangers of Electronic Health Records" at the FreedomFest 2018 Conference
A new, groundbreaking book from Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) will expose how the mandated, government-certified EHR technology (CEHRT) has negatively affected both doctors and patients. Written by CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase, RN, PHN, and published by Beaver’s Pond Press...Brase’s extensively researched work shows how and why Congress forced doctors and hospitals to install a data-collecting, command and control surveillance system in the exam room. It also includes the impact of EHRs on privacy, patient care, costs, patient safety and more, according to doctors and more than 125 studies.
The U.S. Air Force learned to code—and saved the Pentagon millions
The notable thing about the decision to start working on low-level code—and about all of the team’s decisions—is that it was made on the fly, based on real-time conversations about users’ needs. That’s nothing more than best practices for modern software development, but at the DoD, such agility would normally be impossible. Specifications commonly take years to write and then more years to deliver on before code can even be tested in the field—often making systems obsolete by the time they’re delivered. “The DoD violates pretty much every rule in modern product development,” Schmidt told U.S. Congress recently.
How disparate EHR systems, lack of interoperability contribute to physician stress, burnout
Physician burnout is an increasingly common issue in healthcare, and there are a lot of factors that can contribute to it. Long hours, paperwork and the burden of administrative tasks all play a part. But electronic medical records can also contribute to burnout, largely because each system is different. With disparate electronic health record systems comes an added hardship for physicians, affecting their work -- and their reimbursement. Compounding the issue is that many physicians are no longer limited to just one facility. Many handle rounds at multiple hospitals and/or practices, and if each has its own EMR system that doesn't necessarily communicate with the others, it can be a growing headache.
CMS Launches Data Element Library To Support Interoperability
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the agency’s first Data Element Library (DEL). The DEL is a new CMS database that supports the exchange of electronic health information. Using this free, centralized resource, the public for the first time can view the specific types of data that CMS requires post-acute care facilities (such as nursing homes and rehabilitation hospitals) to collect as part of the health assessment of their patients. These assessments include questions and response options (data elements) about patients, including demographics, medical problems and other types of health evaluations. Read More »
3-D Printing Offers Quick, Cost-effective Solution to Help Train Aspiring Nurses
As a regular attendee of conferences on healthcare simulation around the world, Dr. Lori Lioce was already well aware of the growing trend of using 3-D printing to create task trainers – clinical simulators that allow nursing students to repeatedly practice a specific skill in preparation for providing healthcare in the real world. What she needed was access to the technology. So the clinical associate professor in the College of Nursing at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) turned to Norven Goddard, a research scientist at UAH’s Systems Management and Production (SMAP) Center, for help.
Congress Stepping in After Reorganizations, Leadership Vacuum Leave HHS Cybersecurity Center's Fate Unclear
The Health and Human Services Department doesn’t want to talk about its Health Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. And that’s no surprise, since it doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, and no one who was responsible for standing it up is involved with it anymore. Lawmakers from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions sent a letter on June 5 to HHS Secretary Alex Azar pointing out some significant omissions in the department’s Cybersecurity Threat Preparedness Report, which the department is required to submit to Congress. The report is supposed to detail HHS’ responsibilities and preparedness to deal with cyber threats in health care.
The Digital Impact Alliance Open Source Center Announces Strategic Grants to Foster Ecosystem Change
The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) Open Source Center announced its Request for Applications (RFA) for strategic grants to fund open source projects serving the international development and humanitarian sectors. The Strategic Grants Program supports solutions to common challenges many technology for development (T4D) projects face when designing and implementing free and open source software (FOSS) projects. This is the first round of strategic grants and the Open Source Center recently closed its second round of catalytic grants. Read More »
Perspecta Sponsors OSEHRA Open Source Summit
OSEHRA is delighted to welcome Perspecta as the Conference Sponsor for our 7th Annual Open Source Summit, to be held this July 18 – 20, 2018. Officially launched less than a week ago on June 1st, Perspecta was formed through a merger of the U.S. Public Sector Business of DXC Technology with Vencore Holding Corporation and KeyPoint Government Solutions. Those of you who follow the industry know that DXC Technology was the result of a massive merger of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and HP Enterprise Services (which also included EDS). So, while the name is new, Perspecta will bring a wealth of experience (and yes, perspective!) to this year’s event.