Dr. Mark Leavitt, chairman of CCHIT announced he will retire in March. He gave personal reasons for his decision to leave. Leavitt has been the only chairman since the launch of CCHIT in 2004. The commission said it has initiated a national search for a successor. CCHIT is expected to play a leading role in the certification of meaningful use systems in the new year as it is still the only body currently poised to do so.
Blumenthal posts to his series of ongoing updates last week. He discusses the role of information exchange in the goal of making care better and patient-centered. On exchanges, he states how the HITECH Act eliminates the inappropriate commercial, economic, and technical barriers. Read his update.
CMS announces its plans for more data sharing among Medicaid agencies. They will use Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) and the nationwide health information network (NHIN) to accomplish the task. Details in Government HealthIT.
Just when I think I can’t get enough of these standards, on November 5th, Health Level Seven (HL7) announced it has published health care’s first ANSI approved standard that specifies the functional requirements for regulated clinical research in an electronic health record system. Here is the press release.
Blumenthal was one of the keynote addresses Tuesday November 10th at a Health Information Exchange Summit. Speaking at the oldest professional medical society in the US today, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, he continued his theme of the week with making care better and patient-center through information exchange.
ONC awarded the Nitor Group the bridge contract to continue work at the NHIN. Blumenthal, Chopra, and Park have all brought new light and reconsideration to the development and model for the network. Could this team actually bring us a “Health Internet” that all stakeholders will buy into? Chopra and Park are not from the old school and they don’t lack credibility. The bridge contract was awarded to fill the gap between the end of the last contract and the upcoming full and open competition to be held at the end of the year. Read more on this.
And speaking of Todd Park (co-founder of athenahealth and recently appointed HSS CTO), the company he left behind, athenahealth, just received a patent on its athenaNet rules engine. HealthcareIT News has more on this.
Article of the week goes to Anthony Guerra’s Far From Shovel-Ready. It was everywhere and I think as many did a good article. This is not the first time we have brought up Anthony. We missed him tweeting at the last Policy meeting, it appeared he was at another conference. Check him out at Healthcare Informatics.
And on a final note, did you hear they discovered water on the moon?
Have a good week.
