John Halamka MD

Standards Alone are not the Answer for Interoperability

By David McCallie – I have been honored to have served on the HIT Standards Committee from its beginning in 2009. As I reach my term limits, I have reflected on what we have all learned over the past six years of helping to define the standards for the certified EHR technology that lies behind the Meaningful Use program.

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21st Century Cures Act

John Halamka MD – I’m in Washington today for the HIT Standards Committee and I will post the usual summary of the meeting this evening. However, I wanted to post a morning preview of the opening comments I’ll make a the meeting. We are in a time of great turmoil in healthcare IT policy making.


Dispatch from China

By John Halamka MD – The first part of this week I have been in China – Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Xuzhou as part of a Harvard Medical School program to help the Chinese create a learning healthcare system while they build 1000 new hospitals and train 300,000 new primary care givers.


The April 2015 HIT Standards Committee Meeting

By John Halamka – The April 2015 HITSC meeting focused on the Certification Rule NPRM and a comprehensive review of the Federal Interoperability Roadmap. I suggested that a guiding principle for the committee’s work is to emphasize the enablers in the proposals while reducing those aspects that create substantial burden/slow innovation. As a federal advisory committee our job is to temper regulatory ambition with operational reality.


Afterthoughts from HIMSS 15

The HIMSS 2015 conference is officially over. It was a week of more than any one person could take in. It is always good to check in with our regular contributors and industry to see what they had to say about HIMSS this year.