NHIT Week Day Four

Charlene Underwood, Senior Director, Government & Industry at Siemens Health Services, wrote the post "What does HIT mean to me?" where she offers her perspectives as a vendor representative on the HIT Policy Committee Meaningful Use Workshop Group. Charlene asserts that EHR adoption is already here and now the task getting the U.S. healthcare system to start delivering healthcare in a 21st century way. To do that, we must begin laying out the framework for an information technology infrastructure that can support this in how care will be delivered and paid for, a task that is inextricably intertwined with interoperability. While we still have plenty of work to do, Charlene says “Bring it on – there is not an industry that needs it more! It’s time to join the 21st century.”

David Harlow, Founder of The Harlow Group, LLC, submitted "OCR and ONC release model NPPs" David offers his perspective on how the recently released HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) compliance tools – released during the “H-hour” to before the HIPAA Omnibus Rule compliance rules drops next week -- could be better handled via using basic health IT. He states that while telephone and snail mail are nice, many patients would prefer to be in contact with their health care providers via text message or email and that it is their right to have such access. But he does over praise for the model NPP, noting that the model NPP is a useful tool.

Geeta Nayyar, M.D., CMIO at PatientPoint. submitted another great post entitled "Unlocking the Potential of Mobile Technology." Dr. Nayyar shares her perspective on the why it is important to ingrate the currently siloed mobile health technology space, where there are provider apps and patient apps, using statistics and research from various mobile health adoption studies. She asserts that we will see a dramatic positive transformation in our healthcare system when patients and providers should be able to use the same tools and access the same information in real time.

Scott Rupp from Electronic Health Reporter wrote "What is the Value of Health IT?" Although the question for HIMSS’ 2nd Annual NHIT Week Blog Carnival is simple, Scott points out that there seem to be no easy answer as the responses are very different depending upon who you ask (as is clearly evident from this Carnival!). Scott thus put the question out to experts in the community and features comments from 14 leaders across the industry.

And the amazing John Halamka, M.D., CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, reposted his fantastic piece "Patient and family engagement in ICUs" on Government Health IT. Dr. Halamka uses his father’s recent passing and end of life experience to demonstrate the value of developing a cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional, open source application to turn critical care data into wisdom for patients and families. Dr. Halamka’s father suffered from multiple sclerosis for 23 years along with several other comorbidities since 2009. Upon arriving at his ICU bedside in early March, Dr. Halamka spoke with all his clinicians to create an impressive mental dashboard of his progress which he then turned into a scorecard. Dr. Halamka combined both of those with his father’s end of life wishes and leveraged his 20+ years of experience as a CIO, practicing physician and clinical team leader to determine that hospice care was the best decision. Ideally, patients and families should have the tools to make such decisions regardless of their medical sophistication and he is working to make that possible at his facility. Read more about how his healthcare organization is undertaking this ambitious project.

Ruby Raley over at Axway wrote "The Future is at the Intersection: Where Healthcare Information Technology meets the Internet of Things." Ruby is writing about the intersection of the The Quantified Self movement and the Internet of Things and how if used in conjunction together they can help to shape the future of Health IT. Ruby contends that using the low-cost technology sensors employed by users of the Quantified Self Movement one could potentially use those sensors to accelerate healthcare information by giving those sensors to patients to wear and following the platform laid out by the Internet of Things, constantly gather the data to serve as predictors of future health conditions.

John Main at Modernizing Medicine wrote "The Promise of Health IT." John is essentially asserting that in order for Health IT to continue to move forward patients need to start to take on more personal responsibility for their health through the use of technology. John points out that this movement began with the passing of the HITECH Act but despite the fiscal incentive to develop new technology people have yet to catch on to the importance of using that technology to collect data on their personal physical well-being. The rest of the piece simply speaks to the advantages that come from having a large amount of personal healthcare data.

Olivia Goodwin of the Medical Tourism Association wrote "Patient Engagement: Can Age-Old Question be Solved Online?" This piece talks about the importance of the healthcare industry switching from paper to digital and general failure of the populace to take accountability for their personal health by aiding in this process. Olivia then goes on to point out many of the advantages a fully digital healthcare system would bring. With the emergence of new technology, specifically smart phones, people already have the hardware in their hands that is necessary to make this a reality. They simply need to put forth the effort.

Laurance Stunt at the Massachusetts eHealth Institute submitted the post "Mass Appeal for Health IT: How Innovative Health technologies are Transforming Care in the Commonwealth." Laurance begins the article by asserting that Health IT is directly benefiting Massachusetts’ economy and the importance of Health IT in Commonwealth. He then goes on to speak specifically to the issue of switching from paper to electronic health records (EHR’s). Laurance then gives a few specific examples of patients with extremely complicated treatment plans that might not be possible or advisable unless the patients’ records are electronic. The piece concludes by pointing out that Massachusetts can save a lot of money by having better patient follow-up care which with the embracement of EHR’s , will follow naturally.

James Tcheng, MD, Chair of the Informatics and Health Information Technology Task Force at The American College of Cardiology, wrote "What’s Next for Meaningful Use?" Dr. Tcheng speaks to the fact that cardiology is the leader in terms of qualifying for incentive payments as part of the Electronic Healthcare Incentive (EHR) program. Despite this fact, Dr. Tcheng writes that there is still a long way to go for cardiologists, specifically regarding the implantation of the second phase of the EHR program in early 2014. Dr. Tcheng contends that unless there is a change in the law those in the healthcare industry who do not implent EHR’s, even cardiologists, will face reduction in their Medicaid payments. Essentially, he is approaching the belief that EHR’s are essential for the betterment of the healthcare community from an angle other then patient comfort/recidivism.

Sunny Singh, CEO of Edifecs, wrote "Health IT’s $200 Billion Savings Proposition[pdf]." Sunny points out the importance continuing the growth of the healthcare industry by reducing administrative waste. Sunny contends that health insurers are the crux of the solution as a single-average insurer could save $60 million annually by embracing modern technology and streamlining how the process healthcare information. Simply switching to electronic billing will make a clear and measurable difference in costs. Sunny concludes by reiterating the importance of continual healthcare growth and that this is only one way in which to further the industry.

You will absolutely want to take a look over on HIStalk where healthcare technology entrepreneur Kyle Samani wrote "Healthcare IT Donuts." The post begins with a photo of a whiteboard that equates various social networking sites with some metaphor of a donut. Kyle takes this same idea and applies it to the Healthcare IT world; writing a donut metaphor for various Healthcare IT companies. Although it is humorous, it is essentially a photo followed by bullet points.

Jon Mertz wrote "What is the Value of Health IT? Data Freedom." In this piece Jon provides two bullet pointed paragraphs; one defining Health IT and the other defining Data freedom. Although, the title poses an interesting question and plausible answer, Jon fails to articulate the correlation between the two.

Frank Irving, Editor at Medical Practice Insider, wrote "Mostashari’s thoughts on HIT value for office-based physicians." Frank was on the call where Tom Sullivan interviewed National Health IT Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD. For his question Frank asked how physicians benefit from the use of health information technology aside from the EHR Incentive Program. Mostashari initially provided a few stock answer statistics but then pointed out that through the integration of EHR physicians will be able to focus on treatments for entire populations rather than being restricted to individuals.

The Commonwell Health Alliance wrote up "The Value of Health IT." This piece immediately asserts IT solutions are beneficial in the IT community and that given the grandiose nature of the transition there are bound to be frustrations and roadblocks (Affordable Care Act, ICD-10 etc) . Given the difficult nature of these roadblocks and the necessity of continuing healthcares transition into the full embracement of technology and EHR’s , this piece contends that suppliers and providers need to focus on interoperability. The piece concludes with an interesting comparison drawn between the transition from cell phone to smart phone and the transition the health care industry is going through today.

VoiceFirst Solutions submitted "Healthcare CIOs are raising the bar on 5 key healthcare metrics by leveraging mobile, voice-driven technology solutions at the patient’s bedside." the bloggers from VoiceFirst Solutions offers examples of how CIOS are honing in on 5 key patient care metrics, encouraging their providers to utilize mobile, voice-driven technology to improve the face-to-face time with patients. The advancements in this technology space show how health IT can foster better in-person relationships during the patient/provider consultation.