Blue Button 2.0

See the following -

Blue Button Developers to Meet at the White House Today - Verma and Liddell to Open the Conference

More than 700 app developers and eHealth groups and organizations have registed to meet today at the White House for the first Blue Button 2.0 developer conference. The "The inaugural Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference will bring together application developers in the technical community to help build and develop new tools to help patients understand their health data,” said Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in a statement. 

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CMS Goes Live with Blue Button - With Life and Cost Saving Applications for 53 Million Americans to Use

On August 13 at the White House in Washington, D.C., the Office of American Innovation and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will host the first Blue Button 2.0 conference. This event will highlight CMS’ strong investment and leadership in Blue Button as a patient driven means for interoperability, cost-effective care and patient safety. Eight years after President Obama’s announcement of the Blue Button initiative to give Veterans, military beneficiaries and Medicare beneficiaries “easy access to their health information” with the use of a “Blue Button”, CMS Administrator Seema Verma took action with “Blue Button 2.0” so that 53 million Medicare beneficiaries can now make use of CMS approved patient facing Blue Button applications, turning a four-year history of claim data into actionable longitudinal health records to prevent costly medical errors, unnecessary redundant care or other harmful and wasteful care.

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HHS Releases Landmark Report: Reforming America's Healthcare System

On December 3, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an extensive, 120-page report on the administration's proposals to reform the healthcare system. The report, titled Reforming America's Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition, is divided into four major sections. The report that government policy of the last few years has suppressed competition, increased prices for healthcare, and limited choices for consumers. Though rich in detail as it tries to prove each of these points, the more than fifty recommendations are often broad and aspirational rather than practical. Since I am not a health economist, I will leave the market issues to others to discuss (many of the ideas in this report have been vetted and discussed by others previously). But there are two sections of the report which make direct mention of Health IT.

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HIMSS18: Seema Verma - Making the patient the center of our health care system

Press Release | CMS | March 6, 2018

I’ve always been struck by how seldom the patient is mentioned in discussions around value-based care. Let me be clear, we will not achieve value-based care until we put the patient at the center of our healthcare system. Until patients can make their own decisions based on quality and value health care costs will continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. This administration is dedicated to putting patients first, to be empowered consumers of health care that have the information they need to be engaged and active decision-makers in their care. Through this empowerment, there will be a competitive advantage for providers that deliver coordinated, quality care, at the best value, to attract patients who are shopping for value.

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HIMSS19: Open Source Software for Disaster Preparedness and Response

Although not officially listed as a track at the HIMSS19 conference, there are a series of very important presentations on the use of open source software for disaster preparedness and response. This is a critical topic that we have covered extensively in Open Health News. As we detailed in this article, there was a major failure in being able to provide victims of Hurricane Harvey, as well as Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria with access to their medical records. Few emergency medical responders could access their records either. The two success stories that came out of the hurricanes were two open source electronic health record (EHR) systems, OpenEMR and the VA's open source VistA EHR.

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Humetrix to Showcase Medicare Approved Blue Button 2.0 Mobile Platform at HIMSS19

Press Release | Humetrix | February 8, 2019

At HIMSS 19 February 11-15 in Orlando, Florida, Humetrix will demo its iBlueButton 8.0 mobile health platform approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to help millions of Americans covered by Medicare, Veterans, and military personnel in TRICARE receive safer and more cost-effective healthcare. A year after announcing the Medicare Blue Button 2.0 and MyHealthEData initiative at the HIMSS 18 conference, CMS Administrator, Seema Verma continues to emphasize the importance of "giving patients the necessary information they need to make the best decisions about their health care". Humetrix...has embraced this initiative from the start recognizing first and foremost that because Medicare beneficiaries are most at risk for medical errors and redundant tests across multiple providers they need to have access and use of their medical history wherever they receive care.

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Rush Medical Center Demoes Patient-Centered Blue Button 2.0 Mobile App at White House Event

Press Release | Rush University Medical Center | August 17, 2018

Information technology has changed the world, and now it’s changing health care in dramatic and fast-moving ways. Rush is a nationally-recognized leader in using IT to achieve better outcomes, lower costs and improve the patient experience. This leadership reached the White House on Monday, when...Rab and Boutrs presented MyRush Mobile, an app for mobile phones developed by Rush’s information systems department, to representatives of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, including CMS director Seema Verma. The presentation was part of the Blue Button 2.0 Conference, a gathering of software developers held in the White House South Court Auditorium.

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Tech Giants Back White House Open Source Health IT Initiative

Six major technology companies have thrown their support behind the White House's initiative to use an open source, collaborative, approach to accelerate the progress of health data standards and interoperability and to give patients access and control of their medical records. The companies; Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce signed a pledge that was presented at the White House's Blue Button 2.0 developer conference. The conference took place last Monday. Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) told the press that “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.

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VA Announces Launch of 'Lighthouse Lab' at HIMSS18 Conference

Press Release | US Department of Veterans Affairs | March 7, 2018

...the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced the launch of a “beta” version of its Lighthouse Lab, a computer platform offering software developers access to tools for creating mobile and web applications that will help Veterans better manage their care, services and benefits....Considered the “front door” to VA’s vast data stores, Lighthouse is the department’s application programming interface (API) management platform, and functions similar to a waiter’s role in a restaurant — the critical link communicating orders to the “kitchen.” For VA, the kitchen is the system that will prepare the order then deliver it back to the waiter, or API.

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Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
August 13, 2018 - 1:00pm - 5:00pm

The Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference will bring together developers to learn and share insights on how we can leverage claims data to serve the Medicare population. CMS Administrator Seema Verma and other leaders will speak about Blue Button 2.0 and the MyHealthEData initiative. In addition, the meeting will feature lightning talks, demos, and breakout sessions.

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OSEHRA Innovation Webinar - Omnibus Care Plan (OCP): 21st Century Software Infrastructure

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
April 30, 2019 - 3:00pm - 4:00pm

This webinar will explore the use of the data standard Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resources (FHIR) and the Smart on FHIR (SoF) specification to implement 21st Century healthcare applications. The Omnibus Care Plan (OCP) provides care coordination and consent management. Through SoF applications, it provides care management, screening and assessment, Explanation of Benefits using Blue Button 2.0, and Data Analytics and Data Visualization. The webinar will review the OCP project and the value it brings to application development.

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