Clinical Decision Support – HLN Consulting, LLC

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.

HLN Releases Update to its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton March 11, 2019

On March 7, 2019, HLN released a new version (v1.16.1) 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:

DTP Vaccine Group: Added an update to the “Six by Seven” rule to explicitly state that duplicate shots on the same day do not count towards this rule. The intention of this change is to prevent potentially “bad data” that may be passed into the ICE service from affecting the forecast result.
Hib Vaccine Group: Improved handling of duplicate shots administered on the same day. For details, please refer to the Two Shots, Same Vaccine Group, Same Day Exception Rules page.
Minor logic changes to the Meningococcal B, Polio, Rotavirus and Pneumococcal vaccine groups.

HLN recently demonstrated ICE integrated into two EHRs at the HIMSS19 Interoperability Showcase starting in February in Orlando, FL.

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.

So I Survived HIMSS19…

by Noam Arzton February 26, 2019

This was perhaps more of a fete than it initially seems. The conference was massive, with over 40,000 attendees. It centered around a trade show exhibit hall that spanned multiple football fields in length. In some ways it was so big that I felt somewhat discouraged from attending some educational sessions because they were located so far from where I was hanging out that I could get back and forth in time.

So I spent most of my time at the Interoperability Showcase since HLN was participating in two of the use cases: Immunization Integration & CDS, featuring our ICE open source immunization evaluation and forecasting system; and Opioid Crisis, the Person & the Population, featuring our open source Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) as a component of electronic case reporting (eCR). We spent three days repeating every hour the presentation of a multi-step/multi-vendor scenario demonstrating standards-based interoperability between different systems. We had lots of folks come through with varying levels of interest, but this was a great opportunity to talk about open source and the solutions we make available.

But I did have a chance to attend a few sessions relevant to public health, the space I tend to monitor. On Tuesday of the conference, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) sponsored a town hall meeting in a huge auditorium. They introduced their senior staff, reviewed their mandate, and answered questions from the audience. Their main focus was on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Improve the Interoperability of Health Information that was released just before the conference (more on that in my blog on this topic). I also had the opportunity to attend several events sponsored by the HIMSS State Advisory Roundtable which is a policy advisory group made up of influential state and national leaders. Interoperability continued to be the hot topic with a mixture of lament for our seeming lack of progress and hope for the future.

HLN Releases New Version of its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton February 4, 2019

On February 1, 2019, HLN released a new version (v1.15.1) 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 a new 2-dose Adult Series in the Hep B vaccine group with support for the HEPLISAV-B vaccine and logic updates and fixes to the Meningococcal B, HPV, Influenza, Polio and DTP vaccine groups. A revised ICE Implementation Guide (v3r1; and v3r1 with changes highlighted since version 1.14.1) includes a new evaluation reason: SELECT_ADJUVANT_PRODUCT_INTERVAL.

HLN will be demonstrating ICE integrated into two EHRs at the HIMSS19 Interoperability Showcase starting on February 12 in Orlando, FL.

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

See Press Release.

See the feature article about ICE in Open Health News.

HLN to Participate in HIMSS19 Interoperability Showcase

by Noam Arzton January 16, 2019

For the third straight year, HLN Consulting will participate in the Interoperability Showcase at this year’s HIMSS19 Global Conference and Exhibition which is being held in Orlando, FL from February 11-15, 2019. The Showcase itself runs on February 12-14. This year HLN will participate in two use cases:

Immunization Integration & CDS: HLN’s award-winning ICE Immunization Evaluation and Forecasting System will be featured supporting two different EHRs as a sample patient moves through a scenario of lifelong immunizations.

Opioid Crisis, the Person & the Population: HLN’s Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) will be featured as the decision support component of electronic case reporting (eCR) in this scenario about drug overdose.