The January HIT Standards Committee
focused on two important topics, the future of the Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework and the xtandards needed for provenance i.e. who generated the data and I can I trust it?Stan Huff and Arien Malec presented the process that the Standards & Interoperability Task Force will use to evaluate the best way to harmonize standards in the future. Typically Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) create and curate standards but sometimes there is a need to select among competing standards or combine the work of multiple SDOs into an implementation guide. The Healthcare IT Standards Pan...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 28, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - 4th week of January 2015
The cold of late January has been hard on our living things and we’ve sorted all our produce to eliminate cold damaged fruits/vegetables in the hoop house, root cellar, and forest. The apples from this year’s harvest are still fairing well. Empire, Macoun, Winesap, RedSpy, and Rome are still crisp. The Spencer apples have softened and are beginning to mold. We composted about half a bushel. The root vegetables - beets, daikon radish, and turnips were kept in soil until late December. At the moment, they are still crisp and fresh, ready to be turned into soups, salads, and canning.The sq...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 22, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
The Experience of Interoperability Thus Far
As I travel across the country and listen to CIOs struggling with mandates from Meaningful Use to ICD-10 to the HIPAA Omnibus rule to the Affordable Care Act, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the burden on IT leaders.All have expressed frustration with the health information exchange (HIE) policies and technologies for care coordination. quality measurement, and patient engagement.As a country, what can we do to reduce this anxiety?Meaningful Use Stage 1 brought some interoperability especially around public health reporting. Stage 2 brought additional interoperability, with well defined content, vocabulary, and trans...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 21, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Third Week of January 2015
The third week of January is generally the coldest, most bitter time in the New England winter season. Temperatures dip to the single digits, snow/ice/winter mix cover the barnyard, and shoveling manure requires an ice chipper. Eggs laid overnight in the chicken or duck pen crack when they freeze solid. Every creature gets extra food to keep their internal furnaces stoked.The ground is frozen and all the outbuildings are below freezing inside. Even the plants in the hoop house are need to be protected by row cover blankets. Nothing will germinate at below freezing temperatures.Much of the w...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 15, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of January 2015
It’s -6F this morning on the farm. We expect negative temperatures during the second and third week of January every year, so we have to prepare the animals, infrastructure, and equipment.The alpacas and dogs have the benefit of a small oil-filled space heater in the barn which raises the internal temperature of the building about 10 degrees. Protected from the wind, rain, sleet, snow, and ice, the animals curl up together in hay covered stalls, sharing bodily warmth while minimizing heat loss due to convection, conduction, and radiation. See my previous post on staying warm in New England ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 8, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Looking Forward in 2015
As an eternal optimist, I always look forward to the year ahead and forget the bruises of the year that has passed.What innovations can we expect in 2015?In previous posts, I’ve discussed the emergence of FHIR to support standardized query/response APIs for EHRs. I’ve discussed the “post EHR era” and the rise of new workflow tools. I’ve emphasized the importance of social, mobile, analytics and cloud.How is all of this going to come together in 2015? Let me illustrate three examples from recent discussions with industry leaders.1. Radiology Clinical Decision Support - The 2014 ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 7, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - A look back at 2014
Just as 2014 was a technological whirlwind, so was life at Unity Farm.There was new life and death.My father in law died in November. One of our ducks died of pneumonia in December. 2 of our guinea fowl were captured by foxes.Sunny, our new alpaca was born on July 15, 2014 and now weights 50 pounds. She’s energetic, friendly, and adorable. We also had one false alpaca pregnancy - Mint, despite appearing pregnant did not give birthWe started the year with 27 guinea fowl and now have 68. A quick calculation - 34 females x 180 days/year of egg laying x 1 egg/25 hours * 24 hours/day * 10% success ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 1, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2014
2014 was quite a year. Thinking back to December 2013, I cannot believe that so much has happened. Let’s take a look at the major HIT events that shaped 2014 and what they portend for 2015Affordable Care Act - despite challenges with healthcare.gov and state health insurance exchanges, the notion of moving forward with an open insurance marketplace and accountable care got traction. The IT needed to meet the needs of the patient centered medical home, the ACO, and Care Management spawned a new type of software - the care management medical record. Not many products exist and none a...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 1, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Christmas at the Farm
It’s Christmas Day on Unity Farm and the every creature has had extra attention, special meals, and new toys.What better gift for our livestock guardian dogs (Great Pyrenees) than soft fluffy beds in the barn loft? As the pictures below illustrate, this was an ideal gift - the most fun they have had all year tearing each bed into a 1000 pieces. It seems strange, but we made them deliriously happy with their gifts.The ducks, chickens, and guinea fowl got fresh spinach greens from the hoop house, peas, mealworms, and oats. Below you’ll see them grazing in poultry heaven.The alpaca ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 25, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Present Future Tense
I’m often asked by hedge funds, investors, and private equity firms to evaluate start ups based on their management savvy, product maturity, and business models.I’ve been on several calls with startups in 2014 in which the grammar was all “present future tense”"We will have a product that does…"My response to the investors is to clarify1. they will have a product that might...2. they have a product that does...There is a great difference between"We will invent a flying car that does improve commuting"and"We have prototyped a drivable plane that has demonstrated reduced commute times of 50%"When I was ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 24, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Third Week of December 2014
On Sunday, December 21, 2014 astronomical winter begins in the Northern Hemisphere (and ends on March 19, 2015).All the animals and vegetables will be stressed for the next 100 days. It’s a cold and dark time that brings a struggle to survive. Here's a photo of a chilly morning along the railroad tracks at Unity Farm, taken by Gary Beach, a Sherborn resident and author of "The U.S.Technology Skills Gap".One of our ducks, Mulan (they are named by my daughter for Disney princesses) died of pneumonia yesterday. She aspirated water while mating (ducks are rough) and although we tr...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 18, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
The Argonaut Project Charter
Yesterday, a group of private sector stakeholders including athenahealth, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cerner, Epic, Intermountain Health, Mayo Clinic, McKesson, MEDITECH, Partners Healthcare System, SMART at Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, and The Advisory Board Company met with HL7 and FHIR leadership to accelerate query/response interoperability under the auspices of ANSI-certified HL7 standards development organization processes.All wanted to publicly release the charter we created. It’s important that this charter is broadly circulated and understood.As you’ll see from the charter,...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 17, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of December 2014
The reality of farming is that it creates dependency on the farmer - animals, plants, and infrastructure need to be supported 365 days a year. This week, I had a failure of my personal anti-virus software (and my flu shot) and developed the 2014 flu. My wife, who has been my life partner for 35 years, took over my tasks feeding, watering and cleaning all our animal areas while my energy was reduced. At nearly 53 years old, my endurance is boundless, but the flu does reduce my physical abilities. Illness has caused us to realize that we have to be careful to balance to the joys of farming with our ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 11, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
The December HIT Standards Committee
included a review of the draft Federal Health IT Strategic Plan , recommendations about identity management from the Transport and Security Workgroup, an overview of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, and a discussion of upcoming task force work as we all prepare for the publication of the ONC interoperability roadmap and the Meaningful Use Stage 3 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.The meeting began with an introduction from Jon White, the new Acting Deputy National Coordinator. We all know Jon from his leadership of IT initiatives at AHRQ. He brings new energy and insight to ONC. A great choice.I ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 10, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - First Week of December 2014
As the snow falls and windy/moist winter weather envelops the farm, the work has become a combination of managing warmth, tending the vegetables in the hoop house, and indoor activities.Woodlot management has become my major winter exercise - walking the trails and inspecting the forest for fallen trees, broken branches, and pieces of long dead cedar that have not decayed. I’m still working on processing ash trees that fell during Hurricane Sandy. Ash does not need to be aged and becomes instant firewood. I do my best to leave stable dead trees in place so they can become bird habitat .I le...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 5, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
