With the recent news that more than half of providers have implemented some form of electronic health record, it seems like a good time to include a list of some of the more frequent tweeters in this area at healthcare systems across the country. Many providers are facing challenges like interoperability, limits on IT resources and tension with health IT vendors.
A lot of the professionals listed here are chief information officers — one of the most challenging roles in a hospital. Between directing the safe implementation of EHR systems and updates, troubleshooting glitches, regulating HIPAA compliance — particularly with “bring your own device” policies — evaluating new health IT programs in clinical informatics and telemedicine, all while keeping administrators and hospital staff happy, it seems like an impossible position. There are clearly loads more than what I’ve got here, but I’ll be revisiting this topic in the not-too-distant future. Here are 10 health IT professionals to follow on Twitter (to start with):
John Sharp (@JohnSharp) is the manager for clinical research informatics at the Cleveland Clinic.
Will Weider (@CandidCIO) is CIO at Ministry Health Care in Wisconsin.
Dr. John Halamka (@jhalamka) is CIO for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He also authors the blog Life as a Healthcare CIO.
HIStalk (@histalk) is the pseudonym for a man who describes himself as “an informatics guy” and is also the name of his long-running news and opinion blog on all things healthcare IT. It strikes a nice balance between health IT vendor news and perspectives from hospitals as well as industry trends.
Nicole Kerkenbush (@OTSG_CMIO) is the chief medical information officer for the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Drex DeFord (@drexdeford) is CIO at Steward Health Care in Boston, Massachusetts.
Steve Huffman (@SteveHuffmanCIO) is CIO for Memorial Health System of South Bend, Indiana.
Anthony Guerra (@HealthSystemCIO) is editor-in-chief of Healthsystem CIO, an online publication aimed at hospital CIOs.
Dr. Richard Vaughan (@rvaughanMD) is corporate vice president of clinical decision support at SSM Health Care in St Louis, Missouri.
Carl Dirks (@cddirks) is CMIO at Saint Luke’s Health System in Kansas City, Missouri.
[Photo credit: Social media bubble shape made with global communication icons from BigStock]
