HLN Consulting, LLC – Innovators in Public Health Informatics

HLN Attends CSTE 2019 Annual Conference

by Noam Arzton June 5, 2019

HLN attended the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) 2019 Annual Conference in Raleigh, NC on June 2-5. Bringing together over 1,600 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 second year HLN is 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 will attend the meeting along with Janet Hui, “This is an energized community, and the opportunity to exchange ideas and insights is beneficial to everyone.”

This year, Dr. Arzt deliver a talk as part of the program:

“Cloud Computing Tutorial: Driving Solutions in Public Health“

In addition, HLN participated in the presentation of this talk on RCKMS:

“Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS): Real-Life Implementation Progress and Our Future“

In preparation for the meeting, Open Health News has published a feature article written by HLN, Clinical Decision Support Strategies for Electronic Case Reporting and its Open Source Connection.

HLN Releases Update to its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton May 31, 2019

On May 31, 2019, HLN released a new version (v1.17.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE). ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems.

This version includes:

Improvements to handling of duplicate shots. Duplicate shots typically represent “bad data” that has been passed into the ICE service. For two or more duplicate shots on the same day, ICE will select the vaccine that makes the most sense for the circumstance. See Two Shots, Same Vaccine Group, Same Day Exception Rules for the specifics on how this is handled for each vaccine group.
Logic updates to DTP, HPV, and Zoster vaccine groups. See Release Notes for details.
Pneumococcal interval fix in the Adult Series where (under certain circumstances) the PPSV to PPSV 5 year recommended interval is not being applied when there is a valid PCV shot in between the PPSV shots.

The full software release is available for download at https://cdsframework.atlassian.net/wiki/display/ICE/Downloads. A revised ICE Implementation Guide is also available.

See the feature article about ICE in Open Health News.

Ready or Not: New Report on Protecting the Public’s Health

by Noam Arzton May 5, 2019

The Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) released its 2019 edition of what it hopes will be an annual report, Ready or Not: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism last February. The ground-breaking report warns about key global challenges ahead, like the risk of a flu pandemic; the impact of weather pattern changes due to climate change; the dangers of antimicrobial resistance, and others, and tries to offer advice on how to prepare for them.

In Section 1 of the report, titled Health Threats: A Review of 2018, the authors review a litany of disease outbreaks, and severe weather and natural disaster events. They note the incidents, actions, and corresponding research findings, meetings, and events related to each. On the policy front, they note the September 2018 release by the White House of its National Biodefense Strategy (see earlier article on this topic). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released another report, Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities, in October 2018 (updated in January 2019). This section of the TFAH report also reviews the various activities of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense.

ONC Gets It Mostly Right with TEFCA 2.0 [Updated]

by Noam Arzton April 24, 2019

See our final comments on the TEFCA v2 Draft

On April 17, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the second draft of its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) for comment. The initial version was released more than a year ago in January 2018 (see my original blog). As before, this is in response to a requirement imposed by Congress in the 21^st Century Cures Act. After a somewhat lengthy (but well written) introduction, the document contains three parts (compared to just two parts the first time around):

HLN Participates in 2019 California Immunization Coalition Summit

by Noam Arzton April 10, 2019

HLN participated in the 2019 California Immunization Coalition Summit held on April 8-9. 2019 in Riverside, CA. For over twelve years, the CIC Summit has brought together partners and colleagues from throughout California and beyond to share ideas, highlight successes, and identify partnerships.

This year HLN’s president, Dr. Noam Arzt, delivered two talks during breakout sessions at the summit:

Several hundred stakeholders from around California attended this important event.