Government & Policy
I couldn't escape a sense of déjà vu at a recent industry conference. Jonah Czerwinski, director of VA's internal innovation initiative (VAi2), delivered a glowing report. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki challenged VA's more than 300,000 employees to provide "actionable ideas" that would increase access, lower costs, improve performance, or raise the...
Thirty years from now, when most health information transactions will take place over smart-phones, when terabytes of population health data will be available in near-real-time and when the health industry grid has dwarfed the financial grid, what will be remembered of the HITECH Act, or the work of the Office of the National Coordinator for...
Today's healthcare organizations are being urged to adopt electronic health records in the midst of complex legal and regulatory changes, especially in the areas of privacy and security. In this environment there is a clear need for a security framework specifically designed to help healthcare organizations build a security program that addresses...
It is my belief that the entire health IT standards-setting process is controlled by a few large corporate health IT vendors that dominate the market and view standards-setting as the way to accomplish their goals.
In the most recent issue of Government Health IT, the National Cancer Institute's Ken Buetow refers to "information liquidity," his way of describing what a mature nationwide health information network would mean to the biomedical research community. It's a vivid term, conveying information velocity and immediate access to the nooks and crannies...
While issues surrounding EHR incentives and certification have dominated the lion's share of the industry's attention related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), there has been little discussion about other technologies that, when used in coordination with electronic records, can further improve the quality, safety and efficiency...
The Federal Health Architecture (FHA) program recently released version 2.1 of the federal "Connect" gateway – a technology framework developed within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) that will allow participants to exchange health information along the National Health Information Network (NHIN).
Last month, the Office of the National Coordinator's Heath IT Policy Committee unveiled a first draft of its "meaningful use" formula. That's the set of conditions healthcare providers must meet to qualify for Medicare bonuses to help cover the costs of their health IT investment under the health IT stimulus plan.
With the initial definition of "meaningful use" offered by the Health Information Technology Policy Council, we can finally see the broad contours of the administration's plan for the health IT portion of the economic stimulus legislation. In terms of promoting electronic health records, the influx of substantial funds and the advancement of...
