By John D. Halamka, MD In my various state, federal, and international roles I interact with a large number of policy makers from the executive and legislative branches of government. I testify to them, write policy papers, and call their support staff frequently. At the moment in our society, there tends to be a general […]
Life as a Health Care CIO
The security of medical devices
By John D. Halamka, MD Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised hospitals not to use Hospira’s Symbiq infusion system, concluding that a security vulnerability enables hackers to take remote control of the system. The agency issued the advisory some 10 days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of the vulnerability […]
Patient generated healthcare data
By John D. Halamka, MD I’ve often written about the IT strategies of Accountable Care Organizations and the need for a Care Management Medical Record which incorporates EHR data, patient generated data, customer relationship management features, protocols/guidelines and a workflow engine. Although I have yet to see mature products in the marketplace, components are evolving that will fundamentally change […]
Interoperability and the trough of disillusionment
21st century cures act
The Athenahealth/BIDMC collaboration
Wikipedia and Facebook for clinical documentation
Over the past several years I’ve written about the inadequate state of clinical documentation, which is largely unchanged since the days ofOsler, (except for a bit more structure introduced by Larry Weed in the 1970s) and was created for billing/legal purposes not for care coordination.
The view from underneath the bus
EHR causes Ebola! EHRs hold data hostage in stovepiped legacy systems! There is no interoperability in America!
How many headlines have you seen over the past month that are either completely false or a vast oversimplification of complex issues.
As I tell my staff, there is no problem that cannot be morphed into an IT shortcoming.
Sunshine Act/Conflict of Interest
As with previous years, it’s time to openly publish my conflict of interests, board memberships, advisory board positions, and government activities so that anyone reading my opinions has full transparency.
The federal government has made financial disclosure very easy with the Sunshine Act.
Real time big data analytics for clinical care
Over the summer, I’ve given many lectures about SMAC – social media, mobile, analytics and cloud computing.
The most popular analytics topics are business intelligence, big data, and novel data visualizations.
Patient generated data goes mainstream
Since 1999, Patientsite, the BIDMC shared record between doctor and patient, has enabled patients to track blood pressure, glucometer readings, activities of daily living, mood, pain etc. but few patients have used those features.
Why? Because it requires time and energy to maintain that data.
What if data gathering was entirely passive?