By John Halamka MD – Every year I walk the HIMSS floor and speak at HIMSS events with the hope that I can distill the conference sensory overload into a few key themes. In the recent past, big data, interoperability, personalized medicine, population health, and wearables were buzzwords in every booth. This year, the buzzwords were replaced by one overarching concept – providers and vendors must innovate or die.
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By John Halamka MD – Communicating the IT strategic plan is one of the primary responsibilities of a CIO. Most importantly, the IT strategic plan should be seen as an enterprise wide activity and not just an IT centric exercise. IT should be an enabler for the strategy of the business and every IT tactic should tie back to a high priority of the business.
By John Halamka MD & Micky Tripathi – It’s been over 10 years since ONC head David Brailer and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson published the “The Decade of Health Information Technology”, one of the goals of which was to create a “a new network to link health records nationwide.”
By John Halamka MD – As I have written about previously, CIOs across the country are telling me that expectations for IT delivery are at an all time high. More must be delivered faster, cheaper, and with greater usability.
By Tom Skelton – As exemplified already by these first few weeks of 2016, health IT leaders certainly have a lot on their plates this year. Regulations and standards are changing, value trumps volume, the market is evolving, and the patient is moving to the center.
By John Halamka MD – On January 20, Senators Alexander and Murray released the Bipartisan Senate Health Committee Staff Draft of Bill to Help Improve Health Information Technology for Doctors & Their Patients. This is a really important bill. Why? It includes legislative changes that will help reshape/evolve Meaningful Use.
By John Halamka – After 10 years of work, I passed the baton of leadership for US standards harmonization efforts to Arien Malec and Lisa Gallagher. Here’s a brief synopsis of the journey.
By John Halamka MD – ONC recently released the 2016 Standards Advisory. I think this document is more important than Meaningful Use or Certification in accelerating interoperability. Why? Many view Meaningful Use as no longer aligned with the work we need to do for population health, care management, and alternative payment models.
By John Halamka MD – As the year ends and we archive the accomplishments and challenges of 2015, it’s time to think about the year ahead. Will innovative products and services be social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC)? Will wearables take off? Will clinicians be replaced by Watson? Here are my predictions: