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New PHII Blog: A public health perspective on interoperability

by Noam Arzt
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New PHII Blog: A public health perspective on interoperability

The Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) recently published a blog entry written by Dr. Noam Arzt, president of HLN: A public health perspective on interoperability We have ...

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The Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) recently published a blog entry written by Dr. Noam Arzt, president of HLN:

A public health perspective on interoperability

We have written previously about interoperability and its increasing important to public health. Yet public health has some specific challenges to making interoperability effective:

  • There are more than 2,500 public health agencies in the U.S. at the federal, state, local, territorial and tribal levels. This not only leads to great diversity, but as a result public health cannot and does not speak with one voice about interoperability issues (or anything else for that matter). This makes it difficult for some stakeholders to engage public health consistently or to implement solutions that can be used more uniformly and therefore more effectively across public health.

See full blog entry

HLN Participates in Important National Healthcare Meetings

by Noam Arzt
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HLN Participates in Important National Healthcare Meetings

Over the past few months HLN has participated in several important national healthcare meetings: In February, HLN participated in the annual in-person meeting of  the Joint Pu ...

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Over the past few months HLN has participated in several important national healthcare meetings:

  • In February, HLN participated in the annual in-person meeting of  the Joint Public Health Informatics Task Force (JPHIT) in Washington, DC as part of a team representing the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
  • Also in February, HLN participated in the HIMSS17 Interoperability Showcase as part of team demonstrating technology to implement electronic case reporting (eCR). HLN provided a key software component for this demonstration – the Reportable Condition Knowledge Management System (RCKMS).
  • In early March HLN participated in a regional meeting sponsored by the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) in Oklahoma City, OK. This meeting brought together Immunization Information Systems projects from the central part of the country.

Preparing for 2017: Four Important Reports

by Noam Arzt
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Preparing for 2017: Four Important Reports

With so much transition ahead of us at the Federal, state, and local levels in 2017, it is important to begin to plan for what the Health IT landscapes will look like for the comin ...

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With so much transition ahead of us at the Federal, state, and local levels in 2017, it is important to begin to plan for what the Health IT landscapes will look like for the coming year (and beyond). Several key reports have come out – mostly from government sources – which are worth serious consideration for any Health IT planner:

HHS Public Health 3.0 White Paper: This seminal paper sets the stage for ongoing maturation of the public health infrastructure and capability at all levels of government to continue to assure the public’s health.

ONC 2017 Interoperability Standards Advisory: Now in its third year, this material gets longer and longer, and more and more complex each time. The current incarnation is a navigable website chock full of standards, though you can still download a PDF by clicking on the “2017 ISA Reference Edition” or “ISA 2017” links.

ONC 2016 Report to Congress on Health IT Progress: This HITECH-required report updates Congress about progress during the past year. While it is a really good summary of recent and current activities and initiatives, it only deals with what is really going on (or not going on) on the ground in a cursory way.

National Governors Association Road Map for States to Improve Health Information Flow Between Providers: A very detailed report aimed at State policy makers with clear guidance – and lots of examples – to try to move interoperability forward at the State level.

There are no easy answers here, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the information presented in these reports. But they cannot be ignored and can help form the basis of a solid organizational or governmental strategy.

The Reduction of State-coordinated HIE: How Should Public Health React?

by Noam Arzt
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The Reduction of State-coordinated HIE: How Should Public Health React?

A recent article in HealthAffairs describes a significant decline in the number of both operational HIEs and HIEs in the planning stage from several years earlier. The authors note ...

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A recent article in HealthAffairs describes a significant decline in the number of both operational HIEs and HIEs in the planning stage from several years earlier. The authors note continuing barriers to broad-based HIE and a shift to vendor-driven exchange which diminishes the effectiveness of community-based networks. In effect, this translates to a shift away from geographic-based/dominated HIEs to product-dominated HIEs. We have already noted (see The Interoperability of Things) the lack of a national strategy on HIE, and ONC’s Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap barely mentions the concept.

Consumer Access to Health Care Data: Still a Challenge

by Noam Arzt
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Consumer Access to Health Care Data: Still a Challenge

Consumers continue to be frustrated with lack of access to their healthcare data, even as wearables and other consumer-targeted devices and services continue to sprout. Recently, O ...

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Consumers continue to be frustrated with lack of access to their healthcare data, even as wearables and other consumer-targeted devices and services continue to sprout. Recently, ONC launched a Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge to spur the development of new applications and partnerships to provide aggregated health data to patients. While the financial “prize” for this effort is meager, recognition by ONC might be the real brass ring. This challenge focuses on the use of FHIR exclusively to support interoperability between systems and present data to consumers. I suspect that applicants will have some trouble meeting the requirements of the challenge effectively, and this is indicative of the broader challenge in supporting this type of data access.