Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Saturday, April 06, 2013

Weekly Overseas Health IT Links - 06th April, 2013.

Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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Q&A: The imPatient Movement

By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Created 03/29/2013
A new advocacy group launched at HIMSS13 in New Orleans earlier this month. The imPatient Movement wants to change the conversation about patient engagement – giving voice to healthcare consumers and pushing for more fruitful data exchange between patients and their physicians.
With Stage 2 meaningful use set to make patient empowerment a centerpiece, the new organization, founded by NoMoreClipboard, Microsoft HealthVault and Indiana Health Information Technology, Inc. – and actively seeking new members – seeks to "empower patients, healthcare providers and health IT organizations to collaborate and advocate for swift and meaningful action in making electronic health information accessible, interoperable and actionable."
So far, the initiative has found friends in high places.
"The imPatient campaign recognizes what we firmly believe – that both patient and provider attitudes must change in order to achieve the full potential of eHealth, and that both parties will benefit from having greater access to and use of electronic health data," Farzad Mostashari, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, said about the group in a press statement.
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VA, U.K. health service team up on IT

Posted: March 22, 2013 - 12:45 pm ET
The healthcare arm of the Veterans Affairs Department and the United Kingdom's National Health Service are teaming up under a three-year agreement to swap leaders, staff and ideas about the use of healthcare information technology by the two huge government-financed systems, according to a new joint report
The 90-page document, “Making Connections (PDF),” explores what its authors call a “transatlantic exchange to support the adoption of digital health” between the U.S.' Veterans Health Administration and the NHS. The report, produced by 2020 Health, a U.K. think tank with public and private support, was jointly funded by grants from the NHS and the Robert Bosch Corp., and starts with a side-by-side comparison of the two taxpayer-funded healthcare systems.
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Why leveraging big data represents a paradigm shift in healthcare

March 28, 2013 | By Kent Bottles
The term "paradigm shift" is bandied about far too often in books and articles about healthcare.Thomas Kuhn in his classic book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" coined the term to describe a change in the basic assumptions within the rules of science.
Kuhn and his paradigm shift came to mind recently after I finished two books that truly stunned me: "Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World" by Christopher Steiner (2012) and "Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think" by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier (2013).
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Docs limit patient EMR access

By Bernie Monegain, Editor
Created 03/28/2013
Even as policmakers are pushing patient engagement, a new survey signals doctors may not be ready to relinquish control of their patients' medical record.
Eighty-two percent of U.S. physicians responding to a recent survey indicated they want patients to actively participate in their own healthcare by updating their electronic health records. However, only 31 percent said they believed a patient should have full access to his or her own record, with 65 percent indicating patients should have limited access and 4 percent saying they should have no access.
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EHR data still 'too fragmented' for secondary uses

March 27, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
While electronic health record data has the potential to be reused to identify which patients may be eligible to participate in clinical trials, the data capture is too incomplete and "fragmented" to be relied on for such a secondary use, according to new research published in BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making.
Typically, eligibility criteria defined in study protocols is in free text, while the data in EHRs is collected as single elements, such as current disease or patient age.
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5 Underrated Healthcare Trends From A Top CIO

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center CIO Dan Drawbaugh shares his thoughts about what the next health IT opportunities will be.
There is a small group of healthcare providers that have big brands and big ambitions when it comes to pushing healthcare and health technology forward. Think of places such as the Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Johns Hopkins. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is right in that mix.
So I sat down with UPMC CIO Dan Drawbaugh recently to discuss what looks exciting on the technology horizon and where his organization is investing. UPMC is a $10 billion nonprofit company that crosses many lines in healthcare -- it's a huge care provider, a 2-million-member insurance company, a research institution, employer of 55,000 people and even an investor in technology companies. AdTech Ad
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Server failure forces hospital off of EHR for 10 days

March 27, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
Executives at Boulder (Colo.) Community Hospital are probably breathing easier now that the facility's electronic health record system is up and running after a malfunction kept it offline for more than a week.
The outage, which took place on March 12, was the result of a malfunction in one of the hospital's main computer servers, and impacted both its primary server and its offsite backup system, according to a hospital statement. The outage rendered patient data inaccessible, and affected the hospital, its Foothills campus, eight laboratories and six imaging centers.
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Electronic interventions offer short-lived impact on diabetics

By Editorial staff
Mar 26, 2013
Self-management interventions delivered by computer and mobile phone currently provide limited benefits for people with diabetes, according to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. Although computer and mobile phone-based self-management programs had small positive effects on blood sugar levels, these effects seemed to be short-lived.
The researchers reviewed data from 16 trials involving a total of 3,578 people with type 2 diabetes, who used computers or mobile phones as part of diabetes self-management interventions for between 1 and 12 months. Overall, these interventions appeared to be safe but had limited positive effects. There were small benefits for controlling blood sugar levels, with slightly greater benefits for those whose self-care programs were delivered by mobile phones. However, the benefits waned after six months and there was no evidence that these interventions helped to improve depression, quality of life or weight in people with type 2 diabetes.
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New ONC Site Aids Public Comment on Updating Federal HIT Plan

MAR 27, 2013 12:03pm ET
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has launched PlanningRoom, a new Web site to foster public comment as the agency updates the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan.
ONC developed the site with Cornell University. The first topic of discussion on the site, through May 9, is consumer ehealth and how best to empower individuals through health I.T. Patients, consumers, providers, insurers, vendors and all other stakeholders are encouraged to participate.
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World’s Health Data Patiently Awaits Inevitable Hack

Eugene Vasserman is uneasy about his digital pedometer. The company that makes the thing doesn’t know his name, age, or gender, but it does track his every step and his location. “They know where I sleep. They know my address,” says the Kansas State University cybersecurity and privacy researcher.
Some might think he’s paranoid. But he hasn’t stopped using the device. It’s just that he sees the worst-case scenario — and he’s adamant that the rest of us should see it too. Once health data leaves your immediate possession, he explains, it’s out of your control.
“I’m aware of the tradeoff I’m making … [but] I don’t think people understand what they’re giving up by putting this data out there,” he says. “The direct repercussions are not quite clear because the definition of cloud — excuse the pun — is very nebulous.”
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Get set: New HIPAA has teeth

By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Created 03/27/2013
The HIPAA Privacy and Security final rule -- also known as the HIPAA Omnibus Rule -- became effective March 26. One expert predicts enforcers will have a heyday with expanded ability to crack down on providers and their business associates.
According to Jorge Rey, an associate principal and the director of information security and compliance for Kaufman, Rossin, the biggest difference in the new rule is a change in breach notification. Under the old rule, providers were presumed innocent of harming patients when a breach occurred – until they proved otherwise. Under the new rule, providers are presumed guilty of harming patients when data is breached. They will have to prove their innocence.
Providers and their vendors and subcontractors have “in theory,” 180 days to comply before the Office for Civil Rights begins enforcement of the Omnibus Rule, beginning Sept. 23, 2013, Rey warns. But this doesn’t mean providers shouldn’t beware. They still will be held accountable under the old HIPAA rules until then, he says.
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IOM: Integrated records, evidence-based treatment vital to veteran care

March 27, 2013 | By Susan D. Hall
The U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have done too little to smooth the way for the 2.2 million U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom have returned with multiple health conditions, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine.
"[T]he potential long-term consequences of their service heighten the urgency of putting the appropriate knowledge and resources in place to make re-entry into post-deployment life as easy as possible," report co-author George Rutherford, head of preventive medicine and public health at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, told NBC News.
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E-prescribing alerts often 'too much, too late' for docs

March 27, 2013 | By Susan D. Hall
Computerized prescribing alerts were 'too much, too late' in a study that found only 2 percent prompted any action from physicians during patient visits.
In the study, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, University of Edinburgh researchers videotaped eight physicians as they electronically wrote 132 prescriptions. They found that during most doctor-patient interactions, more than half the discussion of a medical problem had already taken place before the doc turned to the computer. What's more, alerts appeared after the physician had explained the options, selected a treatment with the patient, and at times after instructing the patient on how to take the medication and printing out instructions.
"An alert in the final seconds of the task of generating the paper prescription is likely to be regarded as intrusive and unwelcome, and increases the probability of it being ignored," the authors said.
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Healthcare Workarounds Expose EHR Flaws

Doctors and staff often fall back on paper documents to compensate for poorly designed electronic health record systems, says study.
Physicians and medical practice staff members are using both paper-based and computer-based workarounds to overcome real and perceived deficiencies in their electronic health records (EHRs), according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). These workarounds, which are consistent across institutions, "suggest common challenges in outpatient clinical settings and failures to accommodate these challenges in EHR design," the study said.
The researchers directly observed clinical workflows at 11 primary care clinics in different healthcare organizations: two VA medical centers, Partners Healthcare in Boston and the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis. In total, 120 clinic staff and providers were observed caring for 118 patients. AdTech Ad
The study, "Paper- and computer-based workarounds to electronic health record use at three benchmark institutions," classified workarounds in several different categories, including one that the researchers termed "no correct path." In this category, computer-based workarounds were created because a desired option did not exist in the EHR workflow. For example, doctors might tell patients to split blood pressure pills, but there was no way to record that in the EHR, leading to incorrect timings for prescription renewals. The study also cited EHR reminders that kept popping up after a colonoscopy had been scheduled but not completed. A nurse clicked on the box saying the test had been declined to turn off the alert.
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'Big Data' for Cancer Care

Vast Storehouse of Patient Records Will Let Doctors Search for Effective Treatment

By RON WINSLOW

Cancer doctor Sandra Swain, shown in her Washington, D.C., office, is part of an effort to pool patient records in an electronic database.
A major oncology group is launching an ambitious project to collect data on the care of hundreds of thousands of cancer patients and use it to help guide treatment of other patients across the health-care system.
Doctors are launching a project to bring big data and comparative patient information into caring for cancer patients. Ron Winslow and Dr. Charles Penley explain. Photo: Getty Images.
Cancer doctors would be able to consult the database, much like doing a Google search. They would get advice on treatment strategies that might work for their patients based on how similar patients fared in practices around the U.S.
Details of the plan are being unveiled Wednesday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, a nonprofit professional association.
It is the latest example of emerging efforts in medicine to harness the power of "Big Data" to improve care. It reflects growing expectations that information gleaned from huge clinical databases can speed learning about benefits and harms of treatments, support efforts to improve quality of care and hasten development of new medicines.
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Delving Deeper Into Data From CHIME's CIO Compensation Survey

Salaries, for the most part, reflect an organization's perception of job responsibilities, the ability of an employee to meet those requirements and the value of those accomplishments to the employer.
It's no surprise, then, that health care CIOs are well compensated for what they do. Many hospital CIOs face significant demands to achieve ambitious goals for implementing clinical systems and ensure that they work as advertised. The stakes are high, as information is the lifeblood of health care.
A recent survey by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives found that health care CIOs earned an average base salary of $208,417 in 2012. The survey, released last month, primarily focused on CIOs' base salaries and did not conduct a thorough analysis of bonus payments or other additions to compensation, which often augment a CIO's total package.
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Why Hospitals, Doctors Trail the HIT Revolution

Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , March 26, 2013

A lot of very bright people are convinced that the current healthcare IT revolution will happen last at hospitals and in doctors' offices.
Some of them are in significant positions of influence. One such influencer is Chris Wasden, a managing director and innovation practice leader at PwC. I caught up with Wasden at the recent HIMSS conference, and what follows are some excerpts of our conversation.
HLM: Do we have enough technology but not the logistics to deploy it in healthcare?
Wasden: I don't believe that we are ambitious enough with regards to what we want to accomplish, and so we are applying too much technology to do nothing more than create digital versions of the current world, and we're not trying to create a new world.
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When Email Is Part of the Doctor's Treatment

Patients love it. Physicians find it often saves them time and money. So why aren't more doctors burning up the email lines with their patients?

·         By SUMATHI REDDY

The questions come at all hours, popping up on Dr. Mark Seigel's personal email account: Can I dye my hair? Is it safe to drink red raspberry leaf tea? When will the nausea stop?
Dr. Seigel, an OB-GYN with offices in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., answers them all.
"There are some patients, who are kind of like frequent fliers," he said. "I might get 20 emails from the same person. I know…they have fears and I'm mindful of that."
Most doctors don't agree with Dr. Seigel's approach. As the rest of the world has raced ahead with instant communication, medicine still lags far behind. Just under one-third of doctors reported emailing with patients in 2012, up from 27% five years earlier, according to annual studies of more than 3,000 doctors conducted by Manhattan Research, a health-care market-research firm. Those texting rose from 12% in 2010 to 18% in 2012.
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Data-sharing initiative reduces deaths

By Bernie Monegain, Editor
Created 03/19/2013
Sharing data has saved 92,000 lives and $9.1 billion over four and a half years, according to Premier healthcare alliance, which today released results of its QUEST collaborative, made up of 333 hospitals that are members of the alliance. Hospitals nationwide could save 950,000 lives and approximately $93 billion over five years by replicating performance boosting practices employed by QUEST.
Members of the QUEST initiative shared outcomes data and expertise, such as best practices in order to improve their performance across the board.
Among some of the results: Central-line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) reduced by 59 percent, falls and pressure ulcers by 64 percent. Supply costs cut by 29 percent, labor costs by 26 percent.
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Stolen health data increasingly sought after for commercial ventures

March 25, 2013 | By Susan D. Hall
Though hackers generally go after healthcare information they can use in identity theft and other fraud schemes, that data increasingly is prized for numerous commercial ventures--even marketing, according to an article published by The Information Daily.
"Data attacks are increasingly being carried out to gain access to information, which can then be used--and re-used again and again--sometimes even for marketing purposes," David Gibson, vice president of data governance specialist Varonis Systems, tells Information Daily. His company calls healthcare data the "new oil"
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Enjoy!
David.

Friday, April 05, 2013

This Certainly Looks Like A Useful Resource For Health System Improvement And IT. Looks Like The NEHRS Needs A Rethink.

The following appeared a little while ago.

VA, U.K. health service team up on IT

Posted: March 22, 2013 - 12:45 pm ET
The healthcare arm of the Veterans Affairs Department and the United Kingdom's National Health Service are teaming up under a three-year agreement to swap leaders, staff and ideas about the use of healthcare information technology by the two huge government-financed systems, according to a new joint report
The 90-page document, “Making Connections (PDF),” explores what its authors call a “transatlantic exchange to support the adoption of digital health” between the U.S.' Veterans Health Administration and the NHS. The report, produced by 2020 Health, a U.K. think tank with public and private support, was jointly funded by grants from the NHS and the Robert Bosch Corp., and starts with a side-by-side comparison of the two taxpayer-funded healthcare systems.
The VA serves a population of 23 million veterans, of whom 8.3 million are enrolled in the VHA, compared with 53.2 million people served by the NHS. The VHA's 2012 budget of $53 billion is around one-third that of the NHS' $160 billion budget, the report said. The average age of a VHA enrollee is 62, with more than 40% aged 65 and older. VHA patients are typically sicker than most Americans across a plethora of costly chronic conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Many of the patients could be better served by various existing and emerging information technologies, according to the report. And while the NHS covers all ages of the population, providing care to all residents of the U.K.—“free at the point of delivery, irrespective of personal wealth”—including 11 million children under age 18, the proportion of the population in the U.K. age 65 and over is expected to rise 42% to 18 million by 2025, pushing up expected costs.
According to the report, with the collaboration beginning this year, both organizations expect to learn from each other in five areas: a general digital transformation of healthcare to improve patient outcomes; home telehealth, that is, the use of remote patient monitoring for chronic-care management; telemedicine and video conferencing between clinicians and patients to replace face-to-face visits; mobile health, using a range of devices to empower both clinicians and patients with the information they need to provide more effective care; and the use of secure messaging and personal health records to support provider/patient communications.
Lots more here:
There is a very useful amount of interesting material and forward looking ideas here - but in a coherent framework.
Here is a direct link to the report:
This from page 10 or so shows how are a little off course possibly here in OZ.
Secure Messaging and Personal Health Records – an online record accessed or owned by the patient, integrated with clinical providers’ health records, and supporting secure text-based communications between patient and clinician
 What the VHA can learn from the NHS
  • Patients overwhelmingly value on-line transactional support rather than record access on its own.
  • Specialised PHRs can be highly valued for patient groups with specific health needs (e.g. renal patients).
  • There is value to putting patients in control of their own record, allowing them to set personalised goals that matter to them rather than just being clinically orientated, and letting them decide who sees what.
What the NHS can learn from the VHA
  • Secure messaging and PHRs are essential tools in empowering patients and improving self-care.
  • A single record accessible to both clinician and patient supports integration and a co-created care plan.
Well worth a browse to see how thinking is moving overseas.
David.

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Just A Reminder That Security Of Health Information Is Not Guaranteed!

The following appeared from Wired a little while ago.

World’s Health Data Patiently Awaits Inevitable Hack

Eugene Vasserman is uneasy about his digital pedometer. The company that makes the thing doesn’t know his name, age, or gender, but it does track his every step and his location. “They know where I sleep. They know my address,” says the Kansas State University cybersecurity and privacy researcher.
Some might think he’s paranoid. But he hasn’t stopped using the device. It’s just that he sees the worst-case scenario — and he’s adamant that the rest of us should see it too. Once health data leaves your immediate possession, he explains, it’s out of your control.
“I’m aware of the tradeoff I’m making … [but] I don’t think people understand what they’re giving up by putting this data out there,” he says. “The direct repercussions are not quite clear because the definition of cloud — excuse the pun — is very nebulous.”
What we do know is that security breaches surrounding healthcare information have been on the rise, according to the Ponemon Institute. And according to the The Washington Post, there are “gaping security holes” in many of the systems that hold our healthcare data.
As more and more health data is hoisted onto the so-called cloud — for research, medical, and, yes, recreational purposes — these vulnerabilities will only expand. Geneticists and bioinformaticians are using the Amazon cloud to crunch through petabytes of genetic data. Electronic medical records are a key part of the Affordable Care Act, and they’ll be the norm in the not-so-distant future. Consumers have jumped on the health “gamification” bandwagon and are sharing their health information with a wealth of companies, many times unaware that their data could be sold to third parties or whether these companies have the proper security measures in place to safeguard their health information.
“Most people see a service, and they just assume it’s safe and secure and they use it,” said Avi Rubin, the director of the Health and Medical Security Lab at Johns Hopkins University. “There seems to be, I believe, a bias when people get hold of a product to trust it and to think that it’s okay until proven otherwise instead of the other way around.”
But as the recent chain of hack attacks at companies like Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and most recently Evernote suggest, that may be the wrong assumption to make. “Any system that consists in large part of software is hackable,” Rubin warns. At some point, someone will hack a major repository of healthcare data. And it won’t be pretty.
Lots more here:
All I can do is agree that it is only a matter of time. The stories that are told later in this article a quite concerning - to say the least.
David.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

It Is Really Good To See E-Mental Health Being Properly Supported By Government.

The following appeared a week or so ago.

Online therapy delivers savings

Associate Professor Nick Titov, of Macquarie University, has been delivering online counselling for over five years now and in May, will oversee the official launch of the Federal Government’s MindSpot Clinic, a free online therapy service aiming to deliver treatment to around 40,000 Australians in the next three years.
Funded with $16.5 million between Jun 2012 and Jul 2015, the Clinic is a key part of the government’s e-Mental Health Strategy.
The clinic was soft-launched some months ago, and around 25 new patients a day are self-referring, Dr Titov says - meaning they simply find the website and sign up.
“We have seen excellent clinical results and 95 percent of the people involved have said in survey feedback that they would refer the treatment to a friend.”
Online therapy is far cheaper to deliver than face-to-face therapy, he says.
“It does reduce the cost because it reduces the amount of therapist time. A therapist might spend five to ten hours treating each patient with anxiety or depression. But for an online treatment it’s only 1.5 hours of therapist time. We let the technology to do a lot of the skill-building.”
The software teaches new techniques, while the therapist is “a guide and support person through this journey,” he says.
“In the process of recovery people are learning new skills and they are challenging their beliefs and thoughts.”
The online therapy delivers additional benefits because it can track a lot of clinical information about a patient, such as their mood – which they register each time they log in – and their responses to queries.
“We are using IT-smarts to support the role of the clinician,” he says. “The therapist can see who logged in and anyone with an elevated mood score they can straightaway guide and direct the therapist to contact earlier on. We can help people before things get hard.”
Lots more here:
I have to say this is really good news that the use of the internet has become so accepted in the Mental Health domain. With the frequency of significant mental illness at very high levels (near to ½ the population will have a significant episode at some time in their life apparently - see this link for the details
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Mental_illness_prevalence) we were never going to have enough therapists to help everyone who needed it. Saving money might be one motivation but simply being able to make some dent in the demand for service is surely another.

This is where the programs such as that described above can make a real and evidence based difference.
Keep up to good work - and evaluation - is all I can say!
David.

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

No Wonder There Is A Mad Expensive And Potentially Privacy Violating Push On PCEHR Signups.

The following appeared today.

E-health take-up 'missing its target'

  • by: SEAN PARNELL, HEALTH EDITOR
  • From: The Australian
  • April 02, 2013 12:00AM
THREE Australians have been allowed to use a fake name to sign up for an electronic health record but even taking pseudonyms into account, the federal government will fall well short of its registration target.
Little-known provisions in the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record program allow people to register using another name for privacy reasons, for example, if they are taking extra precautions to avoid an abusive spouse or are worried their reputation will suffer if their health status becomes publicly known.
But in gaining the right to withhold their identity, the first three Australians to take up the provision for pseudonyms may have also lost the right to claim government benefits.
"You can seek and receive treatment using your pseudonymous Individual Healthcare Identifier, but you can only claim Medicare Benefit Scheme or the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme payments using your name on your Medicare card," a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing said.
The government had hoped to see 500,000 Australians with a PCEHR by July, but as of March 4 there were only 73,648 registrations, with 108 shared health summaries and 51 discharge summaries also uploaded to the system.
In February, an average of 705 eHealth records were accessed each day through the Consumer Portal, while healthcare providers had access 6147 times a day.
Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton has already identified e-health as an area in which the Coalition would seek to deliver value for money.
Other interesting points follow in the rest of the article found here.
To get even half way to their targets DoHA will need to flog every angle it can think of. The desperation may be reflected in this report.

E-health letter free-for-all

 Medicare Local has infuriated GPs by suggesting they tell their patients there is “no cost” for creating shared e-health summaries for the Federal Government’s national e-health system.
The summaries — listing medications, diagnoses, adverse reactions and immunisation histories — are meant to form the backbone of the billion dollar PCEHR. But there has been furious debate over the plan when it emerged the government was providing no dedicated funding to GPs to either create or update the shared summaries.
Now Tasmania Medicare Local has enraged local doctors over a letter sent to practice staff last week which tells them how to handle questions from patients about the records.
The letter includes the line “How much does it cost?” and says practice staff should say: “There is no cost for creating an eHealth record.”
It adds: “Once registered for an eHealth record, doctors at this practice will be able to upload a summary of your visit”, failing to stress doctors are free to choose whether or not they want to create the summaries.
Findings from the PCEHR pilots last year suggest that it actually takes between five and 15 minutes to create the health summaries, depending on the complexity of the patient’s medical history.
Lots more here:
It all has the feel of a little desperation to me.
David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 161 – Results – 2nd April, 2013.

The question was:

Are You Concerned The May Federal Budget Will Cut Overall Funds To E-Health?

For Sure 44% (17)
Somewhat 10% (4)
Not Really 31% (12)
No Way 5% (2)
I Am A Reader Who Really Has No Idea 10% (4)
Total votes: 39
Very interesting! A small majority seem to think there might be some cut in the budget.
Again, many thanks to those that voted!
David.

Monday, April 01, 2013

Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 1st April, 2013.

Here are a few I have come across the last week or so.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.

General Comment

I hope people enjoyed the Easter Break.
Another pretty quiet week again e-health wise, with a lot of news in the related networking and security arenas.
It is good to see things are settling down after the ructions of Thursday last week. This week we have the political war again going underground while on the surface we have Cyprus causing financial concern and the clownish leadership in North Korea threatening world annihilation! Just a usual week…
I wonder when we are going to see any figures from DoHA on ePIP payments made since Feb 1. Any insiders who know what has happened or where we can see the information feel free to comment!
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Surgery made safer with program that predicts patients' vital signs

A PROGRAM that can predict a patient's vital signs 20 seconds into the future could make surgery safer than ever.
Victoria University's Centre for Applied Informatics has developed algorithms to read and compress patient body-function data in real time.
Its PhysAnalyser program could provide early warning of complications during surgery.
The technology analyses vast amounts of streaming data, collected from many sensors, in a short time.
The data taken every three milliseconds includes heart rate, arterial pressure, venous pressure and airway resistance.
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New Centre to Monitor the Pulse of Australia’s Blood Supply

A new surveillance centre to monitor Australia’s billion-dollar national blood supply has been opened in Canberra
18 March 2013
A new surveillance centre to monitor Australia’s billion-dollar national blood supply was opened in Canberra today by Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Catherine King.
Staff in the new national Blood Systems Operations Centre will manage computer systems used by the nation’s hospitals 24 hours a day.
These include BloodNet, which processes orders for almost 2 million units of blood and blood products a year.
“The new Blood Systems Operation Centre will enable the National Blood Authority to monitor, in real time, the operations of the entire national blood supply chain”, Ms King said.
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MMRGlobal adds EMR integration

By AuntMinnie.com staff writers

March 26, 2013 -- Personal health record (PHR) provider MMRGlobal announced that subscribers to its MyMedicalRecords PHR service will be able to interface with their healthcare providers' electronic medical record (EMR) systems and laboratory reporting systems, effective April 15.
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Australia meeting eHealth challenges

Chai Chuah has been driving New Zealand’s successful eHealth program for more than a decade, and said he has observed Australia’s eHealth system make significant progress in the last two years.
In Australia last week to speak at the Health-e-Nation Summit, Mr Chuah says that dialogue among health professionals two years ago questioned the viability of a PCEHR.
“Now the health record is accepted, it’s up and running, and the conversation is all around the uptake and around populating the health records.”
Mr Chuah believes Australia has been more stringent than New Zealand on standard-setting, through the establishment of NEHTA, but warns that the next challenge will be getting standards adherence. 
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Payroll inquiry to resume next month

Date March 22, 2013

Petrina Berry

Queensland's health payroll inquiry has drawn breath after a fortnight of intensive hearings.
The inquiry has concentrated on whether IBM was given inside information which helped it win a multi-million dollar contract to manage the government's IT systems.
It has emerged that the IBM payroll system has major flaws, which sparked the inquiry.
The hearing adjourned on Friday afternoon and will resume its dissection of the tender process on April 8.
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Online therapy delivers savings

Associate Professor Nick Titov, of Macquarie University, has been delivering online counselling for over five years now and in May, will oversee the official launch of the Federal Government’s MindSpot Clinic, a free online therapy service aiming to deliver treatment to around 40,000 Australians in the next three years.
Funded with $16.5 million between Jun 2012 and Jul 2015, the Clinic is a key part of the government’s e-Mental Health Strategy.
The clinic was soft-launched some months ago, and around 25 new patients a day are self-referring, Dr Titov says - meaning they simply find the website and sign up.
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NSW information commissioner steps down

  • From: AAP
  • March 25, 2013 3:45PM
NSW'S first information commissioner will step down in May after three years in the job.
Deirdre O'Donnell said on Monday her main reason for leaving before her five-year term was up was to fulfil family responsibilities back in her home state of Victoria.
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Healthcare in surgical upgrade

WITH Healthcare Australia running in a "bandaid-type" environment, an overdue upgrade was considered the best treatment.
The organisation's legacy infrastructure included a 10-year-old email system.
To add to this, the organisation operated in a siloed fashion, says Mark Botros, who joined Healthcare Australia as chief information officer in January last year.
"There was no information transfer, there was no sharing of information, no collaboration - none of that at all, everyone was just doing their own thing in their own little pods," he says.
Healthcare Australia is the largest supplier of contingent labour to hospitals across mainland Australia. It has 250 administration staff supporting about 7000 active nurses, doctors and aged-care professionals, with sites across the country, apart from Tasmania. The majority of the IT team is based in Adelaide.
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What if they pulled the plug?

Date March 28, 2013

Brad Howarth

The internet has become so enmeshed in our lives that the loss of it - even temporarily - is more than most of us can contemplate, writes Brad Howarth.
Information black hole... we've become so reliant on the internet, that any glitch causes concerns.
It was 5.30am on November 22, 2012 when Greg Walsh had his first inkling that the internet had stopped working. As a farm manager near Warrnambool, he had risen early to check his email and send instructions to the farm managers he oversaw.
Except on this morning, his home connection to the internet wasn't working. That was not entirely unheard of but he discovered his mobile phone connection was also down. So too was his home phone.
There is the much bigger question of whether the global economy could survive losing the internet. 
It took a much older form of communication - radio - to learn that a fire had damaged the Telstra exchange. The mystery was solved but its ramifications were only just becoming clear.
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Spam dispute becomes 'largest cyber attack' in history of the internet

Date March 27, 2013

John Markoff and Nicole Perlroth

A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts websites said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world.
Millions of ordinary internet users have experienced delays in services like Netflix or could not reach a particular website for a short time.
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'There is no alternative to the internet'

Date March 29, 2013 - 9:32AM

Lia Timson

IT Pro Editor

Australians are yet to feel the reverberations of the world's largest cyber attack, but the unprecedented event has highlighted the fragility of the internet.
There is no alternative to the internet, but when you look at what it is, it's a very fragile ecosystem. 
The denial-of-service attacks first targeted Spamhaus, a Dutch firm that provides web-host blacklists that help companies decide which email traffic to accept. Spamhaus blacklisted CyberBunker, a Dutch web-hosting company they accused of facilitating spam campaigns.
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The state of data breaches

Security breaches can mean loss of custom and affect share prices, warns expert
The implications of data breaches can be severe for companies with potential financial losses and loss of customer trust.
One of the most well-known examples was the Sony PlayStation Network[1] hack from 2011 where an estimated 100 million online accounts were compromised. According to Sony, costs from the PlayStation Network data breach totalled US$171 million.
But Australian organisations have not been immune to data breaches with Telstra and Dell Australia investigated by the Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim in the past two years.
In 2011-12, the Commissioner received 46 data breach notifications, a decrease of 18 per cent from the number received in 2010-11.
While there is no mandatory obligation in the Privacy Act for companies to report data breaches to the OAIC, many do as good business practice.
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Apple upgrades security with two-step verification

Date March 22, 2013

Emily Price

Apple has added a new level of security to iCloud and Apple ID users with two-step verification.
Much like the two-factor authentication process for services such as Gmail and Facebook, two-step-verification will require users to verify their identity when signing into their account from a new device.
Verification will be done using another device, such as a phone or tablet. For instance, if you are trying to sign into iCloud on a new computer, Apple will send a numerical code to your phone. You enter the code received on your phone into the computer, and then Apple knows it's you trying to access the account and you can proceed as planned.
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Union backlash on delayed NBN work

  • by: ANNABEL HEPWORTH and MITCHELL BINGEMANN
  • From: The Australian
  • March 27, 2013 12:00AM
LABOR faces a union backlash over the delays in the rollout of its National Broadband Network, with the powerful Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union expecting the project to be revised no matter who wins the election and warning of "unacceptable" labour rates to meet cost targets.
The CEPU's Communications Workers Union division - which represents workers involved in the NBN - said there were "fundamental" commercial and operational problems at the heart of the project. The union has also revealed its concerns about delays to the rollout that resulted in NBN Co, which is building the network, last week slashing its targets for the number of homes and businesses that will be passed by fibre by June 30 by as much as 44 per cent. NBN Co has also taken back control of the network construction in the Northern Territory because a lead contractor failed to meet its targets.
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10 signs you're about to get scammed

Date March 21, 2013

Matt Petronzio

You can't imagine ever getting scammed. Besides being a diligent internet user who knows the ins and outs of web terrain, you have an email account that siphons all harmful messages into a neat little folder, which you never even check. So you're completely safe, right?
It's not just that one "Nigerian prince" from years ago – there's a whole royal family of scammers out there. 
Think again.
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Through the looking glass into the future

Date March 23, 2013

Asher Moses

Technology Editor

They are known as wearable computers and are yet to hit the streets, but already they are creating controversy.
Google will soon give away and trial 8000 pieces of high-tech headwear known as Google Glass - a computer with a head-mounted display that can run apps, record high-definition video and is operated through voice commands - and plans a broader launch later this year.
The equipment's ability to record surreptitiously has prompted South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi to say it could ''mean the end of privacy as we know it''. Prime Minister Julia Gillard was more positive when she test-drove a Glass late last month, describing it as ''an amazing display of innovation … all this information right before your eyes responding to voice commands''.
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Enjoy!
David.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

A Very Kind Soul Is Doing All The Work For Me. Great Stuff To Browse On A Long Weekend!

A colleague pointed out this blog post last week.

eHealth records: blessing or burden? (slideshow)

In this slide show I have tried to explain the complexity of the Australian eHealth record (or PCEHR) and why it is not necessarily an improvement for health professionals. Feel free to use, download and/or share this presentation.
The direct link to the blog post is here:
http://www.panaceum.com.au/ehealth-records-blessing-or-burden-slideshow/

I have embedded a direct link as the blog indicates Dr Kruys is keen to have the presentation shared.

Reading through the 19 well considered slides all I can say is I wish I had put so clearly on the blog such a useful summary of all that is wrong and ill-considered with the PCEHR.
To me the advantages cited on Slide 3 are totally outweighed the cons on slide 4.
The presentation is available for review and download from the link above.
Many thanks Dr Kruys for a quality presentation that makes it clear just how far the Government has to go to make this PCEHR even slightly useful, safe, clinically acceptable, trustworthy and suitable for adoption.
There are not enough voices warning about all the issues covered here! I suspect Dr Kruys comes down pretty firmly on the burden side as far as the PCEHR is concerned.
David.