Robert E. Connors, FACHE, PMP, CEO, E-Health Designs, LLC, to Attend HIMSS Annual Conference

I will be attending the HIMSS annual conference between 4 and 9 April 2009.

I will be attending most of the Military Health Systems sessions, listed at:

http://www.himssconference.org/education/military.aspx

I can be reached at 703-627-0356, if you want to set up a side meeting with me.

I can meet after normal business hours, as I will be supporting HMJ Foundation and TATRC during HIMSS for the whole day.

Army Medicine: Untested in Battle?

March 30, 2009 Baltimore Sun reports certain Army medical innovations were rushed to the battlefield without proper testing and have proven ineffective, or in some cases, dangerous. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.militarymed29mar29,0,7110366.story?page=1

I think that we’ll have to wait for the Army Surgeons General’s response prior to coming to any conclusion.

The article is interesting in that it prompts the reader to think about the dilemna in trying to get cutting edge technologies out to the field to save lives, however, human subjects research protection is still important.

Kudos to 3M for Health Concept Hub

Kudos to 3M for establishing http://www.concepthub.org

“Concept Hub is designed to facilitate collaboration among users and developers of health care terminologies. Its purpose is to establish a permanent public source of well-defined concepts that can be encoded for data exchange between health care systems worldwide. Concept Hub’s content is seeded by contributions from the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary (HDD). (more…) ”

3M’s effort can only help improve healthcare semantic interoperability.

Social Networking for Healthcare

Linked In has formed a new group promoting social networking in healthcare. 

This would include use of FaceBook and Twitter.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=2174801&gid=1825839&trk=EML_anet_qa_ttle-cnhOon0JumNFomgJt7dBpSBA

I will monitor this group and see what develops.

See slideshow at:

http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/twitter-and-microblogging-for-public-health-presentation

I am a LinkedIn user, but have yet to see the value of FaceBook or Twitter.

Perhaps if there is a bio-surveillance outbreak of disease, these tools could help with preventive measures.

SOA For Dummies

I just finished the SOA for Dummies book.  Highly recommended for healthcare administrators.  SOA  is really a business philosophy facilited by some neat technologies. It is not really just an IT issue.  The authors do a nice job starting off with the basic business philosophy and explain why SOA is important, and then move to specific SOA technologies.

http://www.amazon.com/Service-Oriented-Architecture-Dummies-Computer/dp/0470054352

New EMR Evaluator Tool From KLAS

KLAS has released a free EMR tool that helps clinicians evaluate and choose an EMR. I will be evaluating this tool in the future as to its value.

David Riley’s Presentation on NHIN and CONNECT

David Riley, FHA CONNECT Lead, gave an excellent presentation today on NHIN and NHIN Connect.

See attached slides.

connect_cfw_eseminar_slides_final3

The adapter/bus components are all open source and will be released under a government BSD license on 31 March 2009.

As of 1 April my sources indicate that the code and SDK location will be announced during HIMSS.

The bus will allow federal back end systems like VISTA and AHLTA to connect to the NHIN.

Civilian EHRS and EMRs can also use the adapter/bus to connect to the NHIN.

CDR Emory Fry, MC, USN, and LCDR Steve Steffensen, MC, USN, were instrumental in the development of this adapter.

NHIN 5th Trial Implementation Work Products Now Available

HHS reports that work products from the NHIN 5th Trial Implementation are now available at:  http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/healthnetwork/forums/forum5agenda.html

Where Can I Find Tips on AHLTA Usability?

AHLTA is DoD’s Electronic Health Record, which is used by 50,000 military clinicians to provide clinical encounter documentation for 9.3 million military beneficiaries.

I recently found a great AHLTA Usability web site from the Uniformed Services Family Practice Association, which aggregates a lot of information.

http://www.usafp.org/AHLTA-838-Information-FAQs.html#

What is AHLTA?

AHLTA is DoD’s Electronic Health Record, which serves 9.3 million DoD beneficiaries with a life-long longtitudinal electronic health record.

See http://www.ha.osd.mil/AHLTA/

AHLTA is being designed, developed, tested, deployed, and sustained by the Defense Health Information Systems (DHIMS) Program Office.

See http://www.health.mil/Pages/Page.aspx?ID=13 and  http://dhims.ha.osd.mil/

Northrop Grumman is the current systems integrator.

The Life Cycle Cost Estimate for AHLTA is several billion dollars.

See  http://www.health.mil/Pages/Page.aspx?ID=13

See also my publication at: http://www.ehealthdesigns.com/?page_id=246

AHLTA was designed to encourage clinicians to enter structured documentation using the MEDICOMP MEDCIN structured notes writer, along with free text.

AHLTA also employs a single Clinical Data Repository and Health Data Dictionary, licensed from 3M.

The idea was that by collecting structured, coded documentation, data would be computable and available to improve population health.

Requiring clinicians to enter structured data has met with some resistance as detailed by Maggie Mahar at http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/08/ahlta-continues.html.

However, Ms. Mahar does not have the complete picture, and her analysis is one-sided.  

See my comments to her post at http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/08/ahlta-continues.html

A plan is being executed which will improve the AHLTA graphical user interface, improve performance, and continue to integrate AHLTA with the Veterans Health Administration’s VISTA electronic health record.

Tens of thousands of clinical encounter notes per day are being collected in AHLTA the Military Health System.

The challenge remains on how to use this data for analysis and improved outcomes.