Clinical Decision Support – HLN Consulting, LLC

HLN Adds Additional Support for Earliest/Overdue Date in Latest Release of Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton April 13, 2018

A new release (v 1.12.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available (download ICE version 1.12.1). 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: Hep A, MMR and Zoster. 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 seven vaccine groups, and the remaining three vaccine groups will be completely supported in future releases of ICE in Spring 2018.

In addition, this release includes several other changes with are documented in the release notes. The latest ICE Implementation Guide (v2r20) 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 Updates White Paper on IIS/EHR Feature Overlap

by Noam Arzton April 11, 2018

Immunization Information Systems (IIS) have been around for more than twenty years. Their functionality, completeness, and usefulness have all increased over this time. IIS and electronic health record (EHR) systems have always had unique features, as well as some overlapping features, and the deployment of EHRs has enhanced the local immunization capabilities of clinician practices. Several critical clinical features that are considered to be core functions of IIS are beginning to be supported by EHRs.

IIS and EHR Feature Overlap, originally published in 2014, reviews and discusses five such critical features. The paper offers insight into the likelihood and implications of their migration from IIS to EHR, and offers recommendations to both the IIS and EHR communities for how to thoughtfully guide this migration. The proliferation of EHR with funding from the CMS EHR Incentive Programs has in some cases exacerbated the feature overlap. Both IIS and EHR projects should consider wisely investments in these functional areas, considering the potential for overlap as well as the on-hand expertise to develop, support these feature.

HLN Adds Support for Earliest/Overdue Date in Latest Release of Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton March 13, 2018

A new release (v 1.11.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available (Download ICE version 1.11.1). 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 for Earliest Date and Overdue Date. 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. In this release, ICE returns the earliest and overdue dates for four vaccine groups: Meningococcal ACWY, Polio, Rotavirus and Varicella. The ICE team expects the remaining vaccine groups will be completely supported in future releases of ICE in Spring 2018.

In addition, this release includes a General Rule update which fixes an issue that resulted in the General Rule “Shots Administered Below Series Absolute Minimum Age for Dose 1” not being triggering when there are 2 or more invalid shots given below the absolute minimum age for Dose 1.

The latest ICE Implementation Guide (v2r19) describes how implementers should update their installation and software to properly read the Earliest, Recommended, and Overdue dates. The relevant information starts on page 43. Note that a “track changes” version of this same guide is also available. The tracked changes are intended to make it easier for the reader to see what has changed in the Guide since the prior release of the ICE Implementation Guide (v2r18).

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.

HLN Participates in HIMSS18 Interoperability Showcase

by Noam Arzton March 8, 2018

During the week of March 5 HLN participated along with other public health colleagues in the HIMSS18 Interoperability Showcase which features real-life demonstrations of health information interoperability. The Public Health Reporting use case included HLN’s Open Source Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) which is being deployed nationally in conjunction with CDC,the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). RCKMS provides the clinical decision support component for electronic case reporting, allowing an EHR system to send clinical information to a centralized web service and receive a response indicating whether the patient’s clinical data needs to be reported to public health, and if so to which agencies and through what mechanism.

In addition, HLN’s ICE Open Source Immunization Forecasting Software was included within two products demonstrated by eClinicalWorks and DSS in the Immunization and Vaccination use case.

HLN is a Gold Corporate Member of HIMSS.

HLN Participates in PCORS CDS Learning Network National Webinar

by Noam Arzton January 18, 2018

HLN organized and participated in a national webinar titled CDS for Immunizations (CDSi): A Community and Standards-based Approach on January 18, 2018. Speakers included:

Dr. Noam Arzt, President of HLN, who spoke about the business case for clinical decision support for immunizations, and about HLN’s Open Source ICE vaccine evaluation and forecasting product
Stuart Myerburg from CDC who spoke about the CDC CDSi project
Angel Aponte from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene who spoke about real-work implementations in the Citywide Immunization Registry (CIR)

Over 50 individuals participated in the webinar which was sponsored by the Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Learning Network (PCORCDS).