Clinical Decision Support – HLN Consulting, LLC

HLN Releases Roadmap for Open Source ICE Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton September 18, 2017

HLN has released a product Roadmap for its award winning Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE). ICE is an open source service-oriented, standards-based immunization forecasting software system that evaluates a patient’s immunization history and generates the appropriate immunization recommendations. The Roadmap describes modifications that have already been scheduled for inclusion in new releases of ICE in the near future, in addition to ongoing changes that may be required to maintain compliance with Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendations. Addition of new vaccine schedules, changes to core business logic, and additional functionality are all included on the Roadmap. As additional modifications are scheduled they will be published on the Roadmap as well. HLN hopes this information will help clinical organizations seeking to use ICE in their practices and software vendors seeking to incorporate ICE into their products to plan for new feature availability.

ICE provides state-of-the-art clinical decision support for immunizations (CDSi). ICE can be used in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Records (EHR), Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems.

See Press Release

HLN Attends 2017 Netsmart Public Health Summit

by Noam Arzton August 3, 2017

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.

New Version of HLN’s Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster Released

by Noam Arzton August 1, 2017

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:

Updates to the Polio Vaccine Group and the Meningococcal ACWY Vaccine Group to better reflect latest guidelines, and addition of Influenza vaccine (CVX 185 and 186) to the Influenza Vaccine Group.
Combines PCV and PPSV vaccine groups into one, new vaccine group for Pneumococcal. This change was made to better account for shots administered across the patient’s lifetime. (To support this new Pneumococcal vaccine group, implementers may need to make adjustments to stop looking for the old PCV and PPSV vaccine group codes (700 and 720), and start looking for the new vaccine group code (750). Child and adult pneumococcal vaccinations are now evaluated and forecast under this new vaccine group. The PCV and PPSV vaccine groups are no longer supported.)
Release notes which describe the above changes to the vaccine group logic in more detail.

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.

HLN Presents at 2017 OSEHRA Summit

by Noam Arzton June 23, 2017

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.

HLN’s ICE Open Source Immunization Forecaster Receives 2017 NVPO Upshot Award

by Noam Arzton June 8, 2017

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