William Hersh MD


Health IT and the Limits to Analogies

By William Hersh MD – Many who write and talk about health IT, including myself, are fond of using analogies. One of the most common analogies that we use is that of the banking industry. I have noted that I can insert my Wells Fargo ATM card into just about any ATM in the world and receive out local currency.




Meaningful Use Ending? Yes and No

By William Hersh MD – The HIT world was shaken to its core by Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator of CMS, who announced that the CMS Meaningful Use program was over. More precisely, he stated, “The Meaningful Use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over and replaced with something better.”


Annual Reflections at the End of 2015

By William Hersh – As regular readers of this blog know, I traditionally end each year with a posting reflecting back on the past year. While this year has been another great success for myself and our informatics program at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), it has been somewhat of a transitional year for the informatics field. Many of the new and exciting initiatives in the informatics field from recent years are no longer novel, with some now settling into “midlife” and others being called out for retirement.


Volume is Only One of the Four “V”s of Big Data, Especially for the Right Data

By William Hersh MD – One widely accepted definition of Big Data is that it entails four “V”s: volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. In other words, Big Data is defined by there being a great deal of it (volume), coming at us rapidly and continuously (velocity), taking many different forms and types (variety), and originating from trustworthy sources (veracity).