By William Hersh – Even though many medical students and physicians do not acknowledge it, information has always been a major focus of clinical practice. Physicians have always spent a great deal of time with information, as evidenced by studies that describe time use of physicians.
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By Kathryn Williamson – Practice Management Systems are evolving constantly in response to regulatory changes in healthcare and improvements in technology. It is not uncommon for organizations to rush into the purchasing of a new system thinking it will be an immediate fix to a number problems they might be currently experiencing—from workflow to revenue issues.
By Alex Tate – Meaningful Use is the incentive program with the intention of helping physicians provide better care to their patients through financial rewards and punishments. Those Eligible professionals (EPs) who choose not to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) are about to face a 1% penalty in their Medicare reimbursements.
By John Halamka MD – The August 2015 HIT Standards Committee marked the beginning of an important transition. As work on Meaningful Use winds down, it is being replaced with work on Obama’s signature precision medicine initiative and planning for the 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory.
By Kerri Knippenberg – The Internet of Things (IoT) – an extension of Big Data – is estimated to become a $117 billion industry by 2020. It began with computers, then cellphones, and now has moved to watches that can monitor our active calories burned during spin class.
By Angela Hunsberger – Over the past decade rapid changes in healthcare technology have caused a whirlwind of medical software adoption, and, in some cases, an overconsumption of ancillary products. Medical practices have implemented EHRs, patient portals, and secure messaging to participate in programs such as Meaningful Use and Patient Centered Medical Home certification.
By John Halamka MD – As we gather together stakeholders for strategic planning of next year’s priorities, what are we hearing and what we have learned? With these observations, what are we planning to do in FY16? Over the next month, we will present a 5 page list of “bottom up” stakeholder enumerated high priority projects, categorized as core, advanced, and innovative.
By Edgar Wilson – Discussions of the benefits, potential, and future of EHRs trumpet the advance of personalized healthcare built on the intersection of patient history and genetic data. President Obama has advanced a program to integrate genomics data into both research and treatment, known as the Precision Medicine Initiative.
By William A. Hyman – Interoperability in the context of EHRs is much discussed, but remains somewhat loosely defined. According to the ONC definition, adopted from IEEE, interoperability is “the ability of systems to exchange and use electronic health information from other systems without special effort on the part of the user”.