Clinical Decision Support (CDS)

See the following -

J P Systems Expands Clinical Data Quality and Interoperability Improvement Services

Press Release | J P Systems, Inc. | December 11, 2018

Doctors are increasingly demanding more context to frame the clinical data they see in EHRs. This context must come from having more complete patient records. When multiple external providers are involved in patient care, data often arrives in the form of clinical documents called CDAs (Clinical Document Architecture). Typically, much of the data in these CDA files is miscoded, misplaced or missing. The danger of bad data is a clear risk to hospitals. These CDA files are generated automatically and in many cases no one is looking at the contents. J P Systems can help reduce risk by increasing the data quality in CDAs exported by the hospital's EHR system.

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Machine Learning in Healthcare: Part 1 - Learn the Basics

This article is the first in a three-part series that will discuss how machine learning impacts healthcare. The first article will be an overview defining machine learning and explaining how it fits into the larger fields of data science and artificial intelligence. The second article will discuss machine learning tools available to the average healthcare worker. The third article will use a common open source machine learning software application to analyze a healthcare spreadsheet. Part I was written to help healthcare workers understand the fundamentals of machine learning and to make them aware that there are simple and affordable programs available that do not require programming skills or mathematics background...

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Major Upgrade to Innovative Open Source Immunization Forecaster Released

Press Release | HLN Consulting | August 12, 2018

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 »

Missing from MACRA: 2 Meaningful Use millstones

Press Release | American Medical Association | May 9, 2017

Physicians are now free from reporting on two major Meaningful Use requirements, but some doctors may not be aware of this long-sought change that became effective Jan 1. While it is hard to say how many physicians are in the dark about the change, there are anecdotal reports that some doctors don’t know that the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) final rule agreed with AMA’s call to drop computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support (CDS) from Medicare’s payment program. What’s safe to say for certain is that the move comes as relief to physicians, based on surveys measuring their attitudes on electronic health records (EHR) usability in patient care...

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Mobile Health: What Should Be Regulated And What Not?

Eric Wicklund | Healthcare IT News | July 27, 2012

With the mHealth industry anxiously awaiting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's final draft of guidelines for mobile medical apps (expected by this fall), the talk at that particular panel discussion focused on what should be regulated and what shouldn't. Bakul Patel, a policy adviser for the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, pointed out that the market is flooded with apps – many of them harmless, but some of them potentially dangerous and in need of regulation.

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NY State Office of Mental Health to Implement DSS vxVistA System

The rumors circulating at the OSEHRA Summit last week have now been confirmed. It has been officially announced here and here that the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) will be implementing Document Storage Systems (DSS) vxVistA electronic health record (EHR) system in 23 hospitals and 300 clinics across the state. The prime contractor for this enterprise-wide contract is CGI Group Inc. OMH is one of the largest healthcare delivery organizations in the United States. It has hundreds of facilities across the State of New York. The system, based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) award-winning VistA EHR system, will give OMH a stable, flexible platform to leverage technology to improve patient care and safety. Read More »

ONC Advancing Blue Button, CDS Standards Efforts

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | September 24, 2012

Developers in an ONC voluntary community are beginning to drill down into what will be required to automate the Blue Button feature to exchange patient health information at the consumer’s request under different scenarios. Read More »

ONC HTI-1 NPRM Through Public Health Eyes

On April 18, 2023, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published for comment the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing (HTI-1) Proposed Rule which proposes new  provisions from the 21st Century Cures Act and makes updates to the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program). Weighing in at over 500 pages (the pre-release version), this proposed rule provides some refinements to existing ONC programs, corrections to others, and extensions to yet other provisions. ONC provides additional materials about this proposed rule, including fact sheets, blog posts, and records from topical webinars on their website. Note especially the information provided about a joint ONC-CDC sponsored informational webinar which took place on May 24, 2023, and is available for playback on the site.

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ONC Looking To Beacons For Database Of Insights From HIT Frontier

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | January 3, 2012

The 17 Beacon communities around the country that have brought providers together within regions to use health IT and clinical interventions to elicit better patient care have each demonstrated measureable improvements, including for outcomes around chronic disease and preventive screenings. Read More »

ONC Selects Noam Arzt to serve on the ONC Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force

Press Release | HLN Consulting | February 19, 2018

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has selected Dr. Noam H. Arzt, President of HLN Consulting (HLN), as a member of the Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force. This group of healthcare and health information technology specialists will advise ONC on various aspects of the Draft Trusted Exchange Framework. This framework outlines a common set of principles for trusted exchange of health information records and minimum terms and conditions for trusted exchange as directed by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act.

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Open Health Guide to HIMSS19

The annual gargantuan HIMSS conference is back in Orlando with over 45,000 participants from more than 90 countries. There will be more than 1,300 vendors at the exhibit floor and more than 300 educational sessions. As with the last several conferences, the focus on open source as the key underlying technologies of health information technologies continues to increase. In previous conferences, we have seen the rise of open source technologies, in particular, those related to interoperability such as FHIR and Blockchain. A large number of sessions at HIMSS19 will be focused on another set of technologies powered largely by open source software and design principles such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing.

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Open Source Electronic Health Records For Education And Training

In spite of being very involved in the field of Health Informatics I only recently became aware of VistA for Education (VFE), which has all of the aforementioned attributes of an  excellent solution for EHR education purposes. VFE was developed as a result of a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to supplement the ONC Health Information Technology (HIT) curriculum. Electronic health records (EHRs) are more than just the electronic equivalent of paper-based health records. Electronic health data is easier to search, share and archive, compared to paper records. Additionally, EHRs can be embedded with clinical decision support to alert and remind physicians of patient safety and preventive medicine measures.

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Open Source Immunization Forecaster Updated to Support Pfizer COVID Vaccine

Press Release | HLN Consulting | December 16, 2020

On December 15, 2020, HLN released a new version (v1.26.2) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) in support of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. 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. Version 1.26.2 includes support for new COVID-19 Vaccine Group (with the Pfizer vaccine only). A subsequent release, coming soon, will likely add support for the Moderna vaccine. Read More »

Open Source in the Worldwide COVID-19 Response

February marks the celebration of creation of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998. OSI created the standard definition of the term Open Source that helped guide many of LPI's initiatives today. Through the past year, open source provided many opportunities to organizations to continue to work, implement their projects, and continue reaching out to communities. Here are just a few examples of how open source provides opportunities through the face of COVID-19. The COVID-19 crisis brought out all the creativity of the open source movement. In every area of innovation--open source software, open data, open collaboration, and even open equipment--companies and research institutes have addressed medical and public health needs quickly. This article highlights some of the initiatives in each area.

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Open-Source Clinical Decision Support To Help Meaningful Use?

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | October 23, 2012

Stage 1 Meaningful Use requires the implementation of one clinical decision support (CDS) rule in patient diagnosis and care. CDS is an interactive decision support system that links observations of a patient’s individual electronic health record (EHR) with a repository of health knowledge or an artificial intelligence algorithm to provide physicians with case-specific diagnoses or suggestions for further action. Read More »