Useful and Interesting Health IT Links from the Last Week – 29/04/2007

Again, in the last week I have come across a few reports and news items which are worth passing on. These include first:

http://www.fiercehealthit.com/innovators/2007

Top Healthcare IT innovators

Hello, and welcome to the first edition of our Top Health IT Innovators list. We’re excited to be showcasing what are regarded as some of the most interesting—and disruptive—companies we know of in the healthcare IT industry, including some we can
more or less guarantee you’ve never heard of (yet).

Consumer Health IT?

Wondering why you see so many companies working on consumer-type problems on the list, rather than the back-end gear touched by CIOs and network admins? That’s because this may be the year when consumers have more contact with enterprise health IT than they ever have had before. Many of the intriguing technologies we’re highlighting are designed to guide consumers in their care electronically, using smart interactivity and content. Why? Because while doctors are already good at working with standard internal records, they currently don’t have a smooth way to interact with patients online, link the patients into their own decision-making process or collect patients’ self-reported impressions of how they’re doing. We’re not talking about a big boost in the use of PHRs, though that may indeed happen; we’re talking about a two-way flow of clinical and personal information that the industry has never seen before.

If some of the vendors below get their way, though, patients, clinicians and health organizations will have an online data-sharing dialogue, improving outcomes and saving time and money in the process. It’s an interesting shift in the business, and one, that we think is long overdue. We also think it’s going to hit big and take root quickly, so look for some major changes in patient-doctor interactivity this year.

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This is a fascinating collection of ideas for Health IT Innovation. Visiting the site provides access to 10 different start-up Health IT entities all of whom have interesting ideas that may make a difference either in how health care is delivered or managed. Well worth a browse.

Second we have:

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/F3416139CA164565802572C9005A59E3?OpenDocument

MPs warned about e-health records

27 April 2007

The government has been accused of ignoring concerns about the privacy of the NHS e-care record

Contributors to a hearing of Parliament's Health Select Committee on 26 April 2007 claimed the government is pressuring patients for their information to be included on the Care Record Service.

One claimed that the Department of Health has adopted an attitude of "suppressed hostility" towards patients who choose not to be included in the electronic care record system, NHS patient Andrew Hawker told MPs.

Andrew Hawker, an academic who has written about information systems and described himself as "an NHS patient", warned that the implementation of e-care records should be deferred until core IT systems are fully installed and it has been "thoroughly tested for privacy".

"I feel like a passenger on board a plane," Hawker said. "The plane has not had many test flights, and some of those have crashed. Meanwhile flight attendants are handing out brochures saying how safe it all is."

Further warnings were made by Paul Cundy, chair of the General Practitioners' Joint IT Committee. Cundy said that the summary care record, even in early adopter sites, shows signs of becoming far more than just a "summary" care record.

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This is another piece of evidence for three of the major contentions I have put in this blog. First that major technology initiatives have to be managed in a way they fully involves those at the coal-face. High level consultation during planning and implementation (with executives and managers) that does not reach the grass roots can pose a great risk to overall project success. Second developing an approach to managing privacy that clinicians and patient are happy with is vital. Third it seems increasingly likely that the best way to approach national e-health projects is to develop ‘bottom up’ implementation approaches and not ‘top down’ methodology.

On the same topic the following is also well worth a careful read – written by the developer of the 1998 Connecting for Health Program.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmhealth/422/422we54.htm

Evidence submitted by Mr Frank G Burns (EPR 60)

INTRODUCTION

It is, frankly, astonishing that a Committee of the House of Commons should, at the beginning of the 21st century feel compelled to undertake an inquiry into the value and mechanics of managing health care records in electronic form.
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The last important item regards SNOMED CT.

SNOMED sold to international organization

The College of American Pathologists has agreed to sell the intellectual property rights to its Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms, or SNOMED CT, to the newly formed International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization, based in Denmark, for $7.8 million. CAP's decision to hand off SNOMED to an international organization was announced in January. To provide a smooth transition, CAP will continue to support standards-development operations with the new entity under an initial three-year contract and will continue to provide SNOMED-related products and services as a licensee of the terminology, according to an announcement today by the 16,000-member, Northfield, Ill.-based medical specialty society.

Charter members of the successor organization to the CAP and its SNOMED International division are organizations representing Australia, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

"As the international adoption and use of SNOMED CT has grown, it has become apparent that an international governance structure that is open to the entire global healthcare community would be to everyone's benefit," said CAP President Thomas Sodeman, in a news release. "The college is proud to have assisted in this important milestone." -- by Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer

Details of what is happening in Australia can be found here:

http://www.nehta.gov.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=144

A Canadian announcement of similar news can be found here:

http://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/en/News-Events/InTheNews_long.aspx?UID=267

The next step, for us in Australia, will be for NEHTA to announce the license conditions that will now operate and what the going forward arrangements for maintenance of the Australian version – including extensions for medicines etc.

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/html/news/NewsStory.cfm?articleId=15057

Standard for ER Systems in Works

(April 25, 2007) A new “registered profile,” or a subset of an existing standard, could ease the creation of criteria to certify the functionality, interoperability and security/reliability of emergency department information systems.

Standards development organization Health Level Seven has adopted the Emergency Care Functional Profile as the first registered profile based on HL7’s EHR System Functional Model standard that was adopted in February. The functional model contains about 1,000 criteria covering more than 150 functions in such areas as medication history, problem lists, orders, clinical decision support, and privacy and security. The functional model is designed to provide guidance to electronic health records software developers and purchasers.

The new Emergency Care Functional Profile is a subset of the functional model, containing criteria specific to emergency department information systems.

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This profile is a useful step forward and will be of interest to all involved in emergency and ambulatory care system development. More information at the site.

All in all quite an interesting week.

David.