US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
See the following -
Community Health Network in Houston Leverages Open Source Tech to Help Victims of Hurricane Harvey
Undaunted by the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, the Stephen F. Austin Community Health Network (SFA) responded to the crisis by leveraging open source technology to reach out to their patients and victims of the hurricane in areas of Texas that are virtually inaccessible. The Health Network, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) covering Brazoria County, is one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey and currently recovering. Using an advanced cloud-based version of the OpenEMR software, the SFA Community Health Network has been able to treat patients in clinics physically unreachable by their medical providers.
- The Future Is Open
- Login to post comments
Complaints about Electronic Medical Records Increase
Last month, the nation’s largest union of registered nurses sent a letter to the FDA asking for broader and more stringent oversight of electronic records systems and of computerized physician-order entry systems, which allow clinicians to log treatment instructions for patients. The National Nurses United, as part of its broader campaign highlighting the potential dangers of “unproven medical technology,” says FDA officials should test electronic medical records as rigorously as they might a new drug or an artificial hip implant...
- Login to post comments
Congress Passes Legislation Authorizing Critical Biodefense Programs
The House yesterday passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. The bill reauthorizes existing statute governing public health efforts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Additions made by the bill - some of which were recommended by the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense - address biodetection, hospital preparedness, medical countermeasures and response. Many of these programs will enable HHS to better defend the nation against biological threats. Both chambers of Congress have passed the bill, and it will now go to President Trump for signature.
- Login to post comments
Coronavirus Adds New Stress To Antiquated Health Record-Keeping
The U.S. health care system is on the leading edge of many technologies - except when it comes to passing information between doctors, laboratories, and public health officials. And that could add another snarl to the already troubled effort to test for coronavirus. Overreliance on faxing, phones and paper records is problem enough in ordinary times. Adding thousands of coronavirus tests a day will test the ability of providers, labs, and public health officials to keep track of all the results. Because not all results are automatically downloaded into physicians' records, the doctors may need to log into laboratory web portals or, if all else fails, turn to faxes and phones to learn test results.
- Login to post comments
Crony Capitalist Epic Systems Gets Rich by Manipulating Stimulus Timeline
Newspapers and bloggers have spilled a lot of real and digital ink in recent months over the Department of Energy’s controversial stimulus-created loan guarantee program, the now-defunct green tech firm Solyndra, and its wealthy benefactor/Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser. Too few are paying attention to the government’s push for widespread health information technology adoption, funded in large part by the stimulus bill, and key industry players exerting influence over the policy process for personal benefit. If you haven’t yet heard of Wisconsin-based Epic Systems and its CEO Judith Faulkner, pay attention.
- Login to post comments
Cytta Announces Release of Cytta Connect Open Source Remote Health Monitoring Data Highway
Cytta's open source data highway now connects "Anyone, Anywhere and Anytime" (the A-Cubed Connectivity Standard) and that Cytta's Health & Wellness Connectivity solutions are available to the entire Healthcare industry, including insurers, caregivers and policymakers. Healthcare needs to be flexible, seamless and mobile for patients. Cytta Connect is the only automatic WiFi, cellular and satellite data connectivity solution that achieves this new standard. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Ebola, Electronic Medical Records, and Epic Systems
A Dallas hospital’s bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company? Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease—only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later.
- Login to post comments
Fax Is Not a Machine, It Is a Technology
Once more I am listening to a presentation on interoperability. These always get a little uncomfortable - especially in the early going - because I can almost predict where the presenter will go horribly wrong and do a complete disservice to the audience (generally somewhere between slides 3 and 8). This time it was slide 6 where the speaker inserts stock picture of a decrepit old fax machine with paper cascading off a desk and onto the floor. This comes along with the typical lecture on everything that is wrong with "fax". With the lemmings in the audience nodding/snickering along, the speaker proceeds to misinform and mislead the group. Cringe-worthy really. What's misleading? Pretty much everything he says.
- Login to post comments
Fax Technology is the Cornerstone of Interoperability. Here's Why.
Fax is the dominant information exchange technology in U.S. healthcare, outpacing secure direct messaging 25-to-1. Most of that is exchanged using inefficient and unsecure machines. With the emergence of cloud-based fax technology to facilitate secure system-to-system document transfer, the use of cloud fax needs to be part of every CTO's/CIO's digital strategy...The evolution of fax from paper-based to cloud transmission and storage - Cloud Fax Technology (CFT) - is a key step that enables providers to comply with HIPAA and other regulations. Further strengthening CFT as a key component in Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) is its evolution into Direct Messaging platforms, enabling the seamless exchange of Patient Health Information (PHI) between the diverse data and document management systems used by labs, pharmacies, doctor's offices, hospitals, and billing providers. CFT supports and contributes to the goal of interoperability...
- Login to post comments
FDA Launches Open Source Tool to Help Capture Data from Patients
Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is announcing the MyStudies app, a new mobile technology to foster the collection of real world evidence via patients' mobile devices. Real world data can be collected from a variety of sources, such as electronic health records, claims and billing activities, and product and disease registries, as well as from patient-generated data including in home-use settings, or from data gathered from other sources, such as mobile devices. As part of the agency's work to foster greater opportunities around real world evidence, the FDA partnered with Kaiser Permanente on a pilot study to measure the functionality and engagement of the MyStudies app.
- Login to post comments
Government as a Platform for Progress: HHS’s Open Government Plan
One of the first actions President Obama took after taking office was to direct federal agencies to find new ways to increase transparency, collaboration and public engagement. Since then, one of our top priorities at HHS has been to make our Department more open and accountable to the people we serve. With the publication of our fourth HHS Open Government Plan, we’re building on our past performance in making government more transparent to the public and engaging in new ways of collaborating and partnering with our stakeholders.
- Login to post comments
Harvey Evacuees Leave Their Belongings—and Health Records—Behind
Digitizing the world's medical records was supposed to make doctors' lives easier and patients' lives longer. But unlike banking and shopping, medicine has had a rough time transitioning to the new digital order. Because health care providers use different systems for their electronic health care records, it’s still difficult for a patient’s data to follow them through the medical ecosystem...
- Login to post comments
Health Datapalooza 2017 – The Data Revolution Rolls On
The 8th annual Health Datapalooza returns on April 26 – 28 and offers a re-imagined vision of health and health care through the lens of data. In years past, Health Datapalooza has set its sights on health-care startups, apps, big data, electronic health records – you name it – but the main thrust was always more about the business of health care and how tech and data are used to innovate. The annual conference for data geeks, developers, health tech venture capitalists, and start-up wannabes, among others, will this year triangulate around the idea that the patient should be at the center of health care.
- Login to post comments
Health IT Interoperability Reimagined!
The evolution of fax from paper-based to cloud transmission and storage (CloudFax) is a key step that enables CloudFax providers to comply with HIPAA and other regulations. Further strengthening of CloudFax as a key component in Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) will be its evolution into a Direct Messaging platform that enables the seamless exchange of Patient Health Information (PHI) between the diverse data and document management systems used by labs, pharmacies, doctor's offices, hospitals, and billing providers. CloudFax will support and contribute to the goals of interoperability. Consider:
- Login to post comments
HHS Announces Synthetic Health Data Challenge Winners
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced $100,000 in total awards to six winners of the Synthetic Health Data Challenge (Challenge). Synthetic health data (i.e., data that is artificially created to mimic real-world data), is important to researchers, health IT developers, and informaticians, among others, who need data to test new ideas until access to secure and actual clinical data is available.
- Login to post comments