phenomenalplace

Most Health IT folks today are concerned about Meaningful Use for Stage 2, but they should also be concerned about stage 1 as well.   Under new Federal Regulation for meaningful use, it is certainly possible that the definition of stage 1 meaningful use can change.   As the Meaningful Use Standards final rule stated : The stages of criteria of meaningful use and how they are demonstrated are described further in this final rule and will be updated in subsequent rulemaking to reflect advances in HIT products and infrastructure. We note that such future rulemaking might also include updates to the Stage 1 criteria. The real question for many is what that will mean for vendors implementing products, and providers attesting to meaningful use at a particular stage.   For vendors, it is very clear that EHR products will need to be certified against the new criteria as soon as possible, because again, according to both the final rule for temporary certification  and for ...

Chris W. brings up  Blue Button  on the  Ask me a Question  page, and a few weeks ago it popped up again into my radar screen.  In case you've been in hiding for the past year, Blue Button is the name of a VA initiative to enable vets to download their clinical information in an ASCII text format from the VA patient portal MyHealtheVet .  It's based on a Markle Foundation specification which has gotten quite a bit of attention . Recently the Office of Personnel Management sent a letter   to health plans participating in the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP).  I found an interesting quote in the letter (I underlined the interesting part): Supplying your members with the simple, low-cost and readily available Blue Button  function will strengthen your contractual HIT obligations under FEHBP, align with the  Meaningful Use standards laid out by Health and Human Services (HHS), and most  importantly, empower your mem...

Logistic Growth Curve (courtesy of Wikipedia) Students of economics will likely be familiar with the logistic growth curve.  The curve has been used to model population growth, in modeling of stochastic processes and  adoption of new technology . The early part of the curve is nearly exponential in the early stages, then moves to linear, and finally into exponential decay. Recently, HHS released data on Meaningful Use attestations (through November of last year) on Data.gov . Brian Ahier posted a couple of extractions from this data earlier today.  The data includes the following elements: Variable Name Definition Vendor Name Name of EHR vendor EHR Product Name Name of EHR product EHR Product Version Version of EHR product Product Classification Whether product meets all Meaningful Use requirements (Complete) or meets only part of the Meaningful Use requirements (Modular) Product Setting Practice setting for which...

I'm headed off to the HL7 Working Group meeting next week.  Shortly after that I'll be headed to an IHE meeting to discuss several profiles.  While I won't be there this week, a lot of my standards buddies are in blustery downtown Chicago at the IHE Connectathon.  For fun, I drew up a short cast of characters, aggregating characteristics of people I know in the Health IT standards space.  When you start participating in standards meetings, you'll meet several of these characters too. Venerated Ancient This one has been around since dirt. They started the organization, has led it one or more times as chair of the board or some other exalted title.  They've chaired the same committee for umpteen years.  When they speak, everyone listens and makes noises of agreement.  The venerated ancient can be a very strong asset when they are in your corner, or a challenging opponent when they are not. Historian This person has also been around a long time (perhaps e...

So, you've decided that you want to invest time and effort in developing Health IT Standards , and you've convinced your manager that it's worthwhile .  What next? Presumably, you have a specific effort that you want to participate in mind.  It could be a standard being developed in HL7 , a profile in IHE , or an S&I Framework project.  The first step is to join the requisite work group.  There are good times and bad times to join a project.  The best time to join is in the early stages when it is first being discussed.  The worst time is when it is nearing a major deadline, and the pace to complete things has reached its peak.  It's difficult to catch up at these times, the best way is to do your reading.  Sometimes timing isn't up to you (I've had people tell me I need to get involved in X when X is nearing completion), but if you have some control, its nice to be able to make use of it. Joining the Organization Joining any of the previousl...

Yesterday I wrote a brief post on investing in Health IT Standards .  One obvious question is "What's in it for me (or my organization)?"  The generalized benefits I described in that post really don't give you enough when you have to get support from your manager to participate.  So what are some more tangible returns? Time to market - When you've been involved in the development of a standard, you will often have a significant advantage in understanding how it works.  That can be translated (with appropriate execution) into a market advantage in deployment of the standard.  If it's a good (or better yet great) standard, your participation in its development can provide you with important knowledge ahead of others who haven't even heard of the standard yet.  That knowledge can also be transferred to other staff, often at a much lower cost than fee-based courses. Informing the standard - Knowing what you need and participating gives you an opportunity to e...