HLN Consulting, LLC – Innovators in Public Health Informatics

HLN releases Version 1.13.1 of its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton June 18, 2018

A new release (v 1.13.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available (download ICE version 1.13.1). ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support (CDS) for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems.

The release includes support Earliest Date and Overdue Date for additional vaccines: Pneumococcal and Hib. If enabled, ICE will output two additional forecast dates along with the Recommendation Date: the Earliest Date and Overdue Date. The Earliest Date is the soonest date that the vaccine can be given and still be considered valid. The Overdue Date is the date after which an immunization administered would be considered late. With this release, ICE returns the earliest and overdue dates for nine vaccine groups, and the remaining three vaccine groups will be completely supported in a future release of ICE this summer.

In addition, this release includes an adjustment to the Pneumococcal catch-up schedule (see Exception 1B in the Pneumococcal Vaccine Group documentation for details). All changes are documented in the release notes. There were no changes to the ICE Implementation Guide (v2r20) which describes how implementers should update their installation and software to properly read the Earliest, Recommended, and Overdue dates.

Feel free to e-mail us at ice@hln.com if you have any questions.

HLN Signs Letter of Support for AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC)

Clinical Decision Support

by Noam Arzton June 18, 2018

On June 1, 2018 HLN signed a letter of support regarding a recent decision by the Agency for Healthcare Quality Research (AHRQ) to end financial support for the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) and terminate its operations as of July 17, 2018. The purpose of the Clearinghouse is to make clinical guidelines easily accessible for clinicians, patients, and clinical decision support (CDS) rules and application developers. Loss of this site – the only freely-available one of its kind – will impact all these stakeholders and make evidenced-based medicine harder to support.

See the full text of the letter.

HLN Attends CSTE 2018 Annual Conference

by Noam Arzton June 14, 2018

HLN attended the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) 2018 Annual Conference in West Palm Beach, FL on June 11-13. Bringing together over 1,750 epidemiologists public health professionals, and associated non-profits and vendors, the conference provided sessions, roundtables, and engagement in a number of areas important to its members. For the first time, HLN was a Bronze sponsor of the conference. “Given our work on Electronic Case Reporting (eCR) we feel it’s critically important to support this event,” commented Dr. Noam Arzt, president of HLN who attended the meeting along with Daryl Chertcoff and Maiko Minami, “This is an energized community, and the opportunity to exchange ideas and insights is beneficial to everyone.”

This year, HLN delivered two talks as part of the program:

Maiko Minami, HLN Project Manager, delivered a talk titled, “RCKMS: Tools That Shine Through Implementation of Automated Rules for Electronic Case Reporting“
Noam Arzt, HLN President, delivered a talk titled, “Interoperability and its Impact on Public Health: An Interactive Learning Session“

HLN also participated in this roundtable session with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:

Improving New York City’s Health Through Data Integration

HLN Submits Comments to CMS on IPPS NPRM

by Noam Arzton June 14, 2018

On June 14, 2018 HLN submitted the following comments on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) 2019 Inpatient Prospective Payment System Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to Quality Payment Program based on our earlier comments:

HLN Consulting, LLC is pleased to submit the following comments on the recently-released CMS IPPS NPRM, CMS–1694–P. HLN is a leading public health informatics consulting company. With that in mind, we read documents like the NPRM through a public health lens, and confine our comments to that important context.

HLN Attends AIM 2018 Leadership in Action Conference

by Noam Arzton June 6, 2018

HLN attended the Association of Immunization Managers (AIM) 2018 Leadership in Action Conference in San Diego, CA on June 4-6. Bringing together over 200 Immunization Program Managers, staff, and associated non-profits and vendors, the conference provided leadership training to attendees in a number of areas as well as regional sessions to discuss issues important to Immunization Program activities. For the first time, HLN was a Bronze sponsor of the conference. “We feel it’s critically important to support events such as these,” commented Dr. Noam Arzt, president of HLN who attended the meeting, “Budgets are tight, and it’s essential that public health officials have the opportunity to discuss issues in common, and to learn from each other.”