When we look outside the walls of traditional medicine, we can find innovative solutions that when applied appropriately, can create unforeseen benefits. Stuart Kauffmann, an evolutionary biologist and complexity systems researcher, proposed a theory where biological organisms can morph into more complex systems that expend less energy. The idea of increasing the complexity to gain some increased benefit has been applied to areas outside living organisms with some success. Airbnb disrupted
Read More
Health IT Interoperability| News, Policy, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
UCSF, Cisco to Develop Interoperability Platform for Sharing Health Data
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Cisco are teaming up for a new initiative to jointly develop an interoperability-focused platform that will enable health systems, providers and app vendors to share and integrate health data from multiple sources. That platform will make pertinent patient information accessible when and where it’s needed for care through a highly secure process. Health interoperability – defined as the ability of different devices, IT systems and
Read More
KLAS: athenahealth, Epic Leads Industry in Interoperability
athenahealth and Epic leads the industry in overall interoperability, while eClinicalWorks, McKesson, GE, and NextGen are described as "interoperability laggards," according to recent findings in KLAS' inaugural interoperability report. The report, “Interoperability 2015: Are We Lifting Together?” highlights how provider organizations rate their EMR vendors in terms of how proactive and effective they are in sharing patient data outside their organization.
For the report, KLAS interviewed more
Read More
KLAS: Top EHR Executives Agree to Publish Interoperability Metrics
To help resolve some of the key interoperability challenges in the health IT industry, several key EHR and provider stakeholders are collaborating to finally make interoperability a viable measurement tool. Convened during the KLAS Keystone Summit in Midway, Utah, Micky Tripathi, President and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, led and moderated the summit with EHR stakeholders on how KLAS will publish objective measures of interoperability and ongoing reporting.
Executives who
Read More
Congressional Leaders Urge Admin to Delay Meaningful Use Stage 3 Rulemaking
On Tuesday, congressional leaders continued to urge the Obama administration to immediately adopt Meaningful Use Stage 2 modifications and delay final rulemaking for Meaningful Use Stage 3 no sooner than January 1, 2017. The call from U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) comes as a bipartisan group of 96 Republicans and 20 Democrats in the House of Representatives in a separate letter to the administration urged it to “pause” the process of making stage three
Read More
Information Blocking in Health IT: Myth or Reality?
Editor's Note: Irv Lichtenwald is president and CEO of Medsphere Systems Corporation, the solution provider for the OpenVista electronic health record. Prior to joining Medsphere, he served as CFO of Advent Software, a leading provider of investment management solutions. Between 1995 and 2003, Irv led Advent through three public stock offerings. Do we believe in something we can’t see? The suggestion has been made that some vendors are actively engaged in “information
Read More
Report: Healthcare Interoperability Gets Failing Grade
A national physician survey of nearly 3,000 physicians who use the Epocrates medical reference app reveal that 95% of physicians have experienced a delay or difficulty delivering medical care because patients’ health records were not easily accessible or shared. The Epocrates study, prepared by athenahealth finds only 14% of physicians can actually access electronic health information across all care settings. Given the nearly unanimous frustration over the lack of helathcare
Read More
Epic to Waive Record Sharing Fees
EHR leader Epic announced this week during HIMSS15 that it will no longer charge a fee to exchange patient records between Epic customers and non-Epic customers through a module formerly called Care Elsewhere, Modern Healthcare first reports. Data sharing services with Non-Epic customers have since been bundled into Epic's other interoperability module, Care Everywhere. “We're not going to charge for Care Everywhere for at least until 2020,”said Epic CEO Judy Faulkner in an interview
Read More
Is Machine Interoperability the Next Unusable Level of Meaningful Use?
As the HIMSS15 extravaganza is getting under way, and every EHR vendor flush with cash from the Meaningful Use bonanza is preparing to take its unusable product to the next level, machine interoperability is shaping up to be the belle of the ball. Interoperability in health care is all the rage now. After publishing a ten year interoperability plan, which according to the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) is well position to protect us from wanton market competition and heretic innovations, the
Read More
The Kabuki Dance Of “Blocking Data” In Healthcare
The lack of data interoperability in healthcare continues to plague and haunt the entire industry. Much of the challenge falls squarely in the realm of Electronic Health Record (EHR) software, but EHR software is by no means the only category where this challenge is directly affecting patient lives. I ‒ along with countless others ‒ have written extensively about this topic. Last year I did a 5‒part series on just "interoperability" which I published on Forbes. One piece highlighted the
Read More
