The Trotter Test: EHR/PHR Lasting Seven Generations

Fred Trotter has an article in which he discusses Electronic Health Records, the Iroquois Nation’s notion of considering the impact of the current generation decision 7 generations from now and Microsoft’s HealthVault as well as Google’s announced Personal Health Records: “…My mother died of ovarian cancer. My grandmother took a drug while my mother was in utero that increase the chances that my mother would get ovarian cancer. Any consideration given to my mothers genetic propensity to get cancer must take into account this environmental influence…My grandmothers medical record will remain relevant for at least five generations…How long should we be keeping our electronic medical records? We should ensure that they are available for the next seven generations…A private, for-profit, corporation is an inappropriate storehouse for records that the next seven generations will need. Corporations do not last long enough. Consider the Dow Jones Industrial Average, of the original 12 companies that made up the index, only one is still listed…” I propose that this henceforth be known as The Trotter Test and that it be an indicator of the length of time Electronic Health Records should be designed to last. So far the LGPL Indivo Health is the only one I would consider to be in the running.

Medsphere: It’s Over

Press Release: Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced that all legal disputes involving the company and Steve and Scott Shreeve have been settled and resolved by mutual agreement of the parties.

Medsphere looks forward to continuing the recent growth and development of the company. In recent months, Medsphere has signed four new contracts for the implementation of OpenVista, the company’s comprehensive open source electronic health record (EHR) based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA solution. The company recently also announced the appointment of Michael J. Doyle to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer.

Google Plans Personal Health Record

Google is announcing plans for Personal Health Record (PHR) software. Microsoft announced a similar but controversial effort less than two weeks ago. Google’s offering is said to be available in 2008 so no analysis is possible yet. “Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, said Wednesday here at the Web 2.0 Summit that Google plans to support the “storage and movement” of people’s health records…Although she provided only scant details on the effort, she noted that Google became interested in the personal health record market as it watched Hurricane Katrina take aim at the Gulf Coast and all the paper-based records stored in various medical offices and hospitals in the region…”

PHRs and the AHIMA Bandwagon

Some thoughts about the current crop of PHRs in the wake of the AHIMA PHR campaign launch as reported by Digital HealthCare & Productivity.

With one of the largest informatics groups in the US set to encourage the adoption of PHRs I am wondering what happens if they are successful.

First of all if there is a 10% – 20% increase in patients requesting their records from healthcare providers, are they staffed to handle this?

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Source Code Escrow Absurdity

Software source code escrow with Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is an idea so flawed that it is remarkable anyone accepts this as a serious argument when making EMR purchasing decisions. Yet it repeatedly appears as a check off item on Request for Proposals (RFP) and in ‘vendor neutral’ EMR Implementation Guides. Often (always?) availability of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) licensing does not appear as a check off item on RFPs. Bias towards proprietary EMR software seems evident. Proprietary marketers must love source code escrows. Purchasers should flee from it and get the real thing: verifiable, testable FOSS licensed EMR software in which the end users has complete access to usable EMR source code from the very beginning.

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Who is ‘Canada Health Infoway’?

I’ve just learned about this organization through a newsclip. Considering their website returns .aspx files, it would be safe to assume that this is an extremely expensive government ‘initiative’, cloaked with ‘security’ issues, etc. to spend billions of dollars on a windows based system, using gullible/ignorant/bought politicians. Any comments?
Here’s the news article:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071015/ehealth_071015/20071015?hub=Health

And here’s the glitzy site of the company selling this to the politicians:
http://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/en/Home/home.aspx

Interview With New Medsphere CEO Michael Doyle

Michael J. Doyle has a distinguished entrepreneurial career. He recently joined Medsphere as its new President and CEO, replacing Dr. Kenneth Kizer. Doyle has served as President and CEO of Advantedge Healthcare Solutions, a New York-based Software as a Service (SaaS) outsourced physician-billing company backed by private equity investors. From 2000 to 2004, Mike served as Chairman and CEO of Salesnet. In 1989 Mike founded The Standish Care Company, a provider of assisted living and long-term care services. As Chairman and CEO he guided it through the first successful initial public offering (IPO) for an assisted-living service provider in 1992. A series of mergers and acquisitions resulted in the merger in 1996 of Standish with Carematrix; after the merger Mike served as CEO of the combined companies, which retained the Carematrix name. Mike’s efforts ultimately yielded a highly successful organization with a market capitalization in excess of $500 million. In his career, Mike has held senior management positions at Voluntary Hospitals of America, and Tenet Healthcare Corporation’s predecessor National Medical Enterprises. He received a bachelor of science in biology with a minor in community health from Tufts University, and an MBA with a focus on healthcare and finance from the University of Chicago, where he was a Kaiser Fellow.

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