Dr. Field: “The chief executive officer and the chief technology officer of the THSA were part of the advisory board to help plan the HIE Learning Laboratory. The THSA also has provided guest lectures to students in the Health IT Nine Week Certificate program on deployment of HIEs in Texas. These educational sessions have helped students better understand the governance, financial, technical, business and legal considerations in creating and implementing health information exchange.

“The HIE laboratory exercises allow students to see how simulated medical data is captured in the EHRs and transferred by the HIEs between virtual physician practices representing four cities in the state. In addition, students can evaluate the ways that the software systems accomplish health information exchange. They can gain insight about the trade-offs of various models for health information exchange such as the ‘store and forward’ model in the simulated ‘North Texas Regional HIE’ and a model which aggregates the Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) in the simulated ‘Central Texas Regional HIE.’

“This fall, representatives from the THSA and other state Health IT policy-makers were invited to the HIE Laboratory to perform the same hands-on exercises as the students in Health IT Nine Week Certificate Program. This provided valuable insights to these policy makers about the state of the technology, its features and its current limitations.”

*Note: The students have not created simulated HIEs, but have carried out guided, hands-on exercises using the EHR and HIE software systems donated to the university.

With so many options and changes underway, what is your approach to teaching healthcare standards? Do your graduates enter the work force with a solid understanding of HL7 and Continuity of Care Document (CCD)?

Dr. Field: “We recognize that the ability to transfer not only data, but also to convey the meaning of the data is essential for healthcare. Therefore, we teach our students about several standards, including HL7 and standardized vocabularies such as SNOMED, ICD9/10, LOINC, CPT, and RxNorm. We compare and contrast nomenclatures, taxonomies, and ontologies, pre- and post-coordinated vocabularies, and discuss the challenges with achieving semantic interoperability.

“We also teach the structure and function of HL7 messages, and then introduce CCDs. We then reinforce these concepts with hands-on activities using EHR and HIE software systems in our HIE Laboratory.”

What is the biggest challenge you see in the adoption and use of technology within the healthcare?

Dr. Field: We believe the greatest challenge in the adoption and use of technology within the healthcare industry is the ever-changing nature of the healthcare delivery system itself. With payment reform, implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its accompanying insurance changes, and the focus on improving cost, quality and access in healthcare, the knowledge, skills and technology to accommodate these changes are a moving target. This presents a unique challenge to educational programs, such as ours, which are training and equipping the workforce with the needed competencies to meet these challenges.

It is our belief that by formally training students in both the theory and practice of health information technology and health informatics, that we are directly contributing to the successful transformation of the American healthcare delivery system.