Open Source – HLN Consulting, LLC

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.

Come see us in Hall F, Booth 9100 at the Orange County Convention Center.

See full press release

HHS Releases Landmark Report: Reforming America’s Healthcare System

by Noam Arzton January 6, 2019

On December 3, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an extensive, 120-page report on the administration’s proposals to reform the healthcare system. The report, titled Reforming America’s Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition, is divided into four major sections. The report that government policy of the last few years has suppressed competition, increased prices for healthcare, and limited choices for consumers. Though rich in detail as it tries to prove each of these points, the more than fifty recommendations are often broad and aspirational rather than practical.

Since I am not a health economist, I will leave the market issues to others to discuss (many of the ideas in this report have been vetted and discussed by others previously). But there are two sections of the report which make direct mention of Health IT.

CDC Issues National Test Collaborative RFI

by Noam Arzton December 5, 2018

In October the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Request for Information (RFI) for a Natural Test Collaborative (NTC). Through a series of questions, the RFI seeks opinions and information about “The development of a national testbed (notionally called the National Test Collaborative (NTC)) for real-world testing of health information technology (IT)” and “Approaches for creating a sustainable infrastructure” to achieve it. The scope of the questions is somewhat confusing and quite broad, starting with Clinical Decision Support (CDS) and electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) but quickly expanding to Electronic Health Records (EHR) and interoperability (not precisely defined).

HLN Presents ICE at Fall 2018 Centricity Users Group (CHUG) Meeting

by Noam Arzton November 12, 2018

On November 10, 2018 at the Centricity Healthcare User Group (CHUG) Fall meeting HLN partnered with Health One Technologies (Health1) and Allied Physicians Group (Mellville, NY) to discuss and demonstrate an implementation of GE Centricity that provides real-time decision support at the point of care using ICE, HLN’s Open Source immunization evaluation and forecasting system.

Health1 has over fifteen years experience implementing and optimizing EHRs in physician offices, hospitals, and specialty clinics. With HLN’s assistance, Health1 recently completed an integration between GE Centricity and ICE using a “helper service” that accepts a text file input from Centricity, and translates the evaluations back out in a text file output from ICE. A forecast section was then added to the existing immunization form in Centricity to display the additional data.

Allied Physicians Group is a single specialty pediatric group with 35 practices, 150 providers, 150,000 patients, and 600 users. Evaluation and forecasts from ICE are improving their ability to manage immunization administration and planning more effectively.

See presentation slides.

HLN releases Version 1.14.1 of its Award Winning Open Source Immunization Forecaster

by Noam Arzton August 12, 2018

On August 10, 2018, HLN released a new version (v1.14.1) 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.

The release completes support for Earliest Date and Overdue Date for all vaccine series in ICE’s default schedule. 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. Completing support for Earliest Date/Overdue Date is an important milestone for ICE. HLN will be presenting this new version this week at the annual meeting of the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) and week of August 20 at the CDC Public Health Informatics Conference.

The latest ICE Implementation Guide (v2r20) 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).

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