A couple of really encouraging stories crossed my desk the last few weeks.
First we have this:
Finland builds on local foundations
02 Mar 2009
Finland is on track to build a national electronic health record repository, which clinicians will be legally required to start using from 2011.
The ambitious project, which also involves the development of a national e-prescription service and a patient-viewable record called eView, represents one of the more comprehensive e-health initiatives in Europe.
Crucially, it builds on almost two decades of local health IT development, within the highly devolved Finnish healthcare system, in which municipalities are responsible for local healthcare.
But taking a local approach to developing electronic health records over the last 25 years has created serious headaches on interoperability. “We’ve done the local thing and achieved almost 100% roll-out of EHRs, but the bad news is interoperability,” said Anne Kallio, from the Finnish Ministry of Health.
Speaking at eHealth 2009 in Prague, Kallio said: “We now have a variety of systems in use that don’t easily communicate and often represent a significant local investment, so cannot be easily replaced.”
Kallio said that Finland had decided that to overcome the problems of interoperability it needed to take the step up to a national level. She stressed, however, that the new national eArchive, now under development, builds on top of existing local systems, rather than seeking to replace them.
The eArchive will serve as a long-term archive, holding patient data for 30-plus years, and providing a longitudinal record of a patient as details of their treatment over time are added.
More here:
http://www.ehealtheurope.net/news/4614/finland_builds_on_local_foundations
Second we have this:
CalRHIO Says It's Ready To Go Statewide But Needs State on Board
Four years ago, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) convened a summit and called for the creation of a statewide organization to help the state's health care system move into the digital age. It was to be a public-private entity encompassing health care providers, payers, patients, insurers, government agencies and consumer organizations with two main goals: investment in IT and the secure exchange of information using that technology.
Now, four years and many meetings later, the California Regional Health Information Organization says it's ready to take its show on the road across the state and beyond, if the opportunity arises.
"We are ready to go in one sense," said Molly Coye, chair of the CalRHIO board of directors. She added, "We have a fully developed implementation plan and partners throughout the state but, on the other hand, we still need to be fully integrated into the state's plans. For us to move to the next level requires formal, official recognition from the state that we are the designated statewide health information exchange."
State officials aren't sure exactly how the process might work or when. Part of the equation will be determined by language in the federal stimulus package that specifically allocates money for a regional health information exchange.
"We're still evaluating the system," said June Iljana, spokesperson for the state Health and Human Services Agency. "We don't know yet about the possibility of requests for proposals. We don't have that level of detail right now," Iljana said.
Much more here:
Web links are as follows:
- CalRHIO
- CalRHIO white paper (.pdf)
This all seems to be great news to me – just when I was feeling I needed some. When one remembers that California has a population of 38 million the scale of this task is really spectacular – and sensibly is being approached incrementally – just as things are being in Finland.
If ever there were examples of having developed a plan, and then moving to progressively implement from the ground up, here we have them.
Pity we can’t get our National E-Health Plan to first base (funded) and we have to make do with summaries and one page diagrams! Hopeless really.
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment