Download the MedCity Startup Index for July 2014 Recently we published news about a study that tested how well text messages worked as an engagement tool with people on Medicaid. The conclusions were: “Wow, it worked!” and “It was cheap too!” Although I like the company that provided the messaging – HealthCrowd has a sense […]
With all the new technology flooding the healthcare system, it’s crucial to be able to use and understand it all. One of the speakers at CONVERGE, Kenyon Crowley will explain how he is helping providers get up to speed with the latest in health IT. At the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS), […]
At BIDMC, we've already achieved 100% EHR adoption and 90% Meaningful Use attestation among our clinician community. Now that the foundation is laid, I believe our next body of work is to craft the technology and workflow solutions which will be hallmarks of the "post EHR" era.
Under stage 2 of Meaningful Use, patient and family access to data sources will be required. This will prevent the confusion that resulted in my mom being prescribed 22 medications during a recent hospital stay for a broken hip.
Massachusetts has created a three year, three phased HIE plan based on “pushing” records from place to place, creating analytic repositories, and “pulling” data from providers based on a centralized consent repository/ master patient index. Here’s a brief overview from a recent NPR broadcast. We all want to solve the “Unconscious in the Emergency Department […]
One major issue facing private and public Health Information Exchanges (HIE) is how to ensure patients privacy preferences are respected by obtaining their consent before data is shared. This Boston Globe article illustrates the complexity of the issue. Today I met with a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys, vendor experts, and IT leaders to discuss BIDMC’s […]
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.
Everyone — almost every one — had something to say about yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld most of the Affordable Care Act. We talked to people from all around the industry and here is what they had to say. For more reactions, check out these posts: Professors, doctors, lawyers Medical device leaders Lobbyists […]
Most health IT interoperability and connectivity discussions these days center around HL7, CCD, and other structured data interchange. However, the vast majority of data (in terms of size) is shared as images and documents. The DICOM and PACS standards are very successful but given the number of questions I get about them from readers it […]
CMS EHR Incentives: The Dark Side The US Federal Government is spending untold billions of dollars in an effort to promote the transition of our health care system from one based on paper to one based on electronic interoperable data. This massive effort is not only necessary; it is noble and ranks with other Herculean […]
