Clinical Decision Support (CDS) services such as HLN’s Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) are modular, loosely-coupled components of larger systems accessed via web services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Under HIPAA, services provided to Covered Entities (CE) which involve protected health information (PHI) as defined in the statute are subject to the regulation. But are CDS services such as ICE subject to this regulation?
Introduction
HLN Consulting, LLC (HLN), a leading public health software application developer, has been at the forefront of Open Source software development, use, and support for public health. This has encompassed both the deployment and support of third-party Open Source products for our clients, and especially the development of new Open Source solutions. Since the vast majority of HLN’s work is government funded, software development activities conducted under “work for hire” agreements with government agencies often leads to public-private collaboration that results in Open Source products.
HLN attended the 2017 American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) National Meeting in Chicago, IL from April 11-13 and presented the following talks:
We encourage you to check out all the excellent presentations delivered at this important meeting.
In December 2016 CDC issued a Request for Information related to clinical decision support (CDS). Specifically, CDC was, “…seeking input on the most important areas of focus, the stakeholders who are or should be part of the effort, and depictions of the current state of CDS development and implementation, including detailed descriptions of the individual components that impact effectiveness and the process of CDS development, particularly in those areas where the responder to this RFI has specific expertise.”
In HLN’s response we answered CDC’s questions largely based on our experience with ICE and RCKMS. These projects involve significant engagement between public health and the clinical and vendor communities and represent significant experience to leverage open source solutions more broadly.
Read our new blog on the Libertas Academica site:
Clinical decision support for immunizations (CDSi) is defined as, “an automated process that determines the recommended immunizations needed for a patient and delivers these recommendations to the healthcare provider… (it provides) healthcare providers with immunization evaluation and forecasting tools designed to automatically determine the recommended immunizations needed when a patient presents for vaccination.”