EVENTS

JUN

Interactive Policy Forum on Health Care, 'Big Data'

Washington, D.C.

JUN

Webinar About How Physicians Use Health IT

Online

JUN

Summit Explores Using Video Games in Health Care

Boston

View All Events

FROM THE FOUNDATION

Big Business, Little Data

A growing number of Californians are being sent to ambulatory surgery centers for a wide variety of procedures, yet little is known about the care they deliver because reporting is not required.

Keeping Track of Asthma

CHCF has made a second investment in Asthmapolis, a device that tracks asthma inhaler use and reports data through mobile phones to patients and doctors to better manage the disease.

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Friday

AHRQ Publishes E-Prescribing Guides for Doctors, Pharmacies

Two new guides created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality aim to help physician practices and independent pharmacies deploy electronic prescribing systems. The guides cover topics such as building an e-prescribing implementation team, evaluating e-prescribing vendors and determining the return on investment for e-prescribing tools. Health Data Management et al.

ONC Unveils Standards Framework for Clinical Decision Support Tools

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has launched a new standards and interoperability framework called Health eDecisions. The framework aims to help build consensus on standards for clinical decision support systems. CMIO, FierceHealthIT.

CDC Requests Approval for Hepatitis Testing Data Collection System

According to a Federal Register notice, CDC has requested approval from the Office of Management and Budget to implement a Web-based hepatitis testing data collection system. The notice says the project would standardize data from various testing sites. Modern Healthcare.

VA Awards Contract for Wireless System To Track Medical Tools

Hewlett-Packard has received a contract worth about $543 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement a wireless system to track medical equipment at VA's 152 health care facilities. The Navy plans to deploy a similar medical equipment tracking system. Bloomberg et al.

EHR Adoption Raising Privacy Concerns for Mental Health Workers

Some health systems require psychotherapy notes to be entered into a patient's electronic health record. Many mental health workers are concerned that such practices could let other clinicians access mental health data without the patient's permission. Kaiser Health News' "Capsules."

University of California Spearheading New Initiative To Mine 'Big Data' in Health Care

NIH Director Francis Collins, Atul Butte of the Stanford School of Medicine, David Patterson of the University of California-Berkeley and Taylor Sittler of UC-San Francisco discussed new efforts to mine "big data" for health care and scientific research.

Running Time: 4:48

DATA POINTS

Do Physicians Use EHR Systems To E-Prescribe or Do They Use Standalone E-Rx Systems?

In 2011, 82% of physicians who electronically prescribed used electronic health record-based e-prescribing software and 18% used standalone systems, while in 2008, 63% used EHR-based e-prescribing software and 37% used standalone tools, according to a report by e-prescribing network Surescripts.

FEATURES

Electronic Quality Reporting Poses Major Challenges

by Ken Terry, iHealthBeat Contributing Reporter

Stakeholders warn that the proposed Stage 2 meaningful use criteria for clinical quality measure data collection will be difficult for vendors and health care providers to achieve. CMS is withholding comment on the issue until it releases its final rule, which is expected this summer.

COMMENTS (1)

"As far as I can tell, ONC and CMS have expected the challenge in reporting quality measures. That's why they have developed and released the open source reporting tool call PopHealth to help the reporting requirement. The tool is free. It takes in p..."

- AJ Chen

PERSPECTIVES

DIY Remote Health Monitoring -- More Team Than Solo Sport

by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

A recent report predicted that consumers will be responsible for 80% of the remote health monitoring market by 2016, but we know that technology alone will not inspire or sustain behavior change among consumers. Remote health monitoring is and will continue to be a team sport.

COMMENTS (1)

"DIY remote monitoring can help an individual improve her/his wellness, manage a chronic condition, or save a life. Remote condition monitoring (RCM) can perhaps evaluate precursor parameters of migraine headaches, pulmonary and cardiac dysfunctions, ..."

- Kel Mohror