Dr. Noam Arzt, President of HLN, attended the second annual Netsmart Public Health Summit. This meeting brought together representatives from local public health agencies who primarily use NetSmart’s public health electronic health records software. Dr. Arzt was invited to attend and he delivered a presentation on Clinical Decision Support Tools for Public Health.
A new release (v1.8.1.0) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available. (Download ICE v arzt1.8.2.0). ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations (CDSi) for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems.
The release includes the following changes:
Implementers should refer to the new ICE Implementation Guide (v2r15) when making adjustments to be compatible with this latest release, including the new Pneumococcal vaccine group as well as a few other vaccine and evaluation reason codes that have been added. (A “track changes” version of the guide is also available to make it easy to see what has changed since the last release.)
You can determine which release of ICE you are using by viewing the README.HISTORY file that is included with each distribution.
Please feel free to e-mail us at ice@hln.com if you have any questions.
See press release.
On June 19-20, 2017, Dr. Noam Arzt, President of HLN, participated by invitation in the 12th Annual Stewards of Change Institute National Symposium on behalf of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). This symposium provided a unique opportunity to discuss key issues in data management and interoperability with a small, but diverse set of stakeholders across the health and human services. The symposium included a particular focus on issues surrounding the current opioid epidemic. In addition, a new National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC) was launched (with funding from the Kresge Foundation) to spearhead information sharing regarding interoperability strategies and activities. Though there was no CDC participation at this symposium, there was a very nice briefing from several representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services including the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Dr. Don Rucker.
This symposium represents a welcomed expansion of the Stewards of Change focus from human services into the health domain. This expanded conversation will allow public health to participate more fully as the shift to our collective concern about wellness requires a more holistic view of people, their requirements, and their circumstances. We look forward to continuing engagement with this community and an opportunity to bring what we have learned in public health about interoperability into this new forum.
On June 13, 2017, Michael Suralik, project manager at HLN, co-presented with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) colleagues in a session titled “Update on the Immunization Project Workgroup” at the 2017 Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) Summit. Mike discussed HLN’s continuing work with VA on implementing our ICE Open Source Forecaster with VistA, the current EHR system used by VA.
On June 6, 2017, HLN was awarded the 2017 Upshot Award for Excellence in Vaccine Supply, Access, and Use by the National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO) for its ICE Open Source Immunization Forecaster. In the letter of award, Dr. Jewel Mullen, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health commented that,
HLN Consulting’s efforts on the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) are impressive. This powerful tool-including its open-source nature and seamless integration into clinical workflows-holds great promise for improving clinical decision-support and ultimately vaccination rates. Thank you for daring to innovate, collaborate, and lead in an area that is not only complex, but constantly evolving.
Mike Suralik, one of HLN’s project managers, was on hand to receive the award at the meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee in Washington, DC. HLN is pleased to accept this award on behalf of the ICE project. While we have been the lead organization, we consider ICE to be a community effort of interested public health organizations, clinical users, and software developers. This project would not be a success without ongoing cooperation between these participants. ICE is an important product for the immunization community. It is collaboratively developed, maintained, and supported yet is freely available for use. We hope ICE can gain a broad acceptance not only here in the US but across the world.
See press release