PSA: HCHIC Inaugural Fundraising Event

Public Service Announcement:

“Our Father’s life was shortened by many years because a laboratory test result that showed a reversible kidney failure was lost in the paper shuffle.”

— The Dunn Family

The not-for-profit Harris County Health Information Cooperative (HCHIC) is announcing its inaugural fund raiser at St. Arnold’s brewery September 20th, for a Houston, Texas area, county-wide or state-wide, non-proprietary Electronic Medical Record system: “Much like a lighthouse benefits all of us, your tax-deductible contribution to HCHIC will be used for desperately needed Electronic Medical Record (EMR) unification with proven and robust non-proprietary software that will be implemented, developed and promoted in Harris County and Texas. If you cannot attend the event, your tax-deductible contribution can be sent to HCHIC 4010 Blue Bonnet, Suite 202 Houston, Tx 77025. Individual memberships starting at $100 are available as well as silver ($500), gold ($1000) and platinum ($10,000) Sponsorships. Membership and Sponsorship donations received prior to October 31st will be ‘founding’ memberships. Membership allows voting rights as well as access to internal communications. Current goal: $80,000. 3 year budget goal: $2 million.” All implementation and development products will be FOSS licensed.

Dvorak: ‘Something To Avoid at All Costs’

Many in Health IT are moving to all over-the-web ‘asp’, software-as-service Electronic Medical Records services with total centralized control of data. John C. Dvorak sounds off a note of caution for such a trend with the recent Windows Genuine Advantage server outage which should be a wakeup call for those moving to ‘online everything’ applications: ‘What is often lost in individual analyses of how to proceed with your data-processing needs is the concept of “being at the mercy of a single company.” It’s something that you need to avoid at all costs. This Windows Genuine Disadvantage pothole should make all users rethink their strategies…’ He further notes that this outage “happened to Microsoft, not to Alabama Joe’s Server Farm and Toaster Repair.” a note of caution indeed.

Personal Health Record Functional Model

The Personal Health Record (PHR) Functional Model from HL7 will be released soon. Watch out ….
The working group of HL7 on electronic information sharing between doctors and patients is going to release a Personal Health Record Functional Model soon. It is done by the volunteer group.

You should soon be able to get a copy of the model from:
www.hl7.org/ehr

Check it out…

OpenEMR 2.8.3 Released

OpenEMR version 2.8.3 and its companion FreeB 0.13 release are now available from SourceForge. This release has had a heavy focus on billing improvements, and is a major upgrade. Some highlights are:

  • Electronic claims support has been rewritten, is much easier and no longer uses FreeB
  • Electronic secondary claims may be generated
  • NDC information may now be included in both electronic and paper claims
  • Improved support for billing codes with modifiers
  • Improved handling of electronic remits (X12 835)
  • Improved tracking of claims history
  • Added a start date for insurance plans, and logic to reference prior plans when appropriate
  • Support for the new HCFA 1500 format
  • Experimental support for multiple concurrent login sessions on the same desktop
  • Added dates and issues to documents and sorting of documents by date
  • Support for individual provider signature images in faxed prescriptions
  • Fee Sheet now supports justification and copays
  • Option to easily view the patient ID card from the patient summary
  • Fixes for known security vulnerabilities
  • Many other improvements and fixes

OpenEMR HQ Launches total EMR Solution

September 1, 2007 will see the official launch of OpenEMR HQ, a solutions provider offering several “enterprise level” EMR solutions to small to mid-sized clinics. The service will offer both hosted and on-site installations of the OpenEMR electronic medical records software package and a pre-configured, semi-managed appliance called “EMR-RACK” which promises to offer clinics an easy and affordable way to implement OpenEMR. They will also provide customization, development, installation, support, and training services to clinics worldwide.

PR: Open Source Stack Delivers The Most Affordable EMR

Open Source Tools provide an extremely powerful and affordable foundation for CCHIT certified ambulatory electronic medical record and practice management system development. Combining these tools with the Sofware as a Service (SaaS) delivery model makes now allows for advanced EMR and Practice Management tools to be delivered to the physician’s desktop through thte Internet at extremely affordable prices. Waiting Room Solutions is built on the LAMP stack architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). With service prices starting as low as $149/physician/month, it is hard to find a more cost-effective, affordable solution.

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Google Health Prototype Speculations

eHealthNews.EU Portal made an attempt to underline the current Google Health Prototype speculations. In the recently published article you will be able to access the related web links to some official and non-official blogs.

Google Health Product discussions have been again refreshed after several official and non-official Google Health Prototype related news articles.

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NIH’s National Database for Autism Research Deploys with OpenClinica as Clinical Assesments Component

NIH’s National Database for Autism Research Deploys with OpenClinica as Clinical Assesments Component.

(Cambridge, MA) August 16, 2007 Akaza Research, LLC announced today that its OpenClinica product has been deployed as the clinical assessments component of the NIH’s National Database for Autism Research.

The National Database for Autism Research, or NDAR, is a collaborative biomedical informatics system created by the National Institutes of Health to provide a common, nationwide resource to support and accelerate research on autism. NDAR will make it easier and faster for researchers to gather, evaluate, and share autism research data from a variety of sources.

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Mirth 1.6 Released!

We are excited to announce the release of Mirth 1.6! This is a significant upgrade which includes both critical bug fixes and new features. The functionality and stability of existing connectors has been improved to fully integrate with even more third-party systems. The user interface has also been enhanced to make channel development and maintenance even easier. Additionally, this release includes NCPDP support, real-time connection monitoring and plug-in functionality.

OpenClinica Enterprise Selected to Power Clinical Trials by Australian CRO

OpenClinica Enterprise is being adopted to power clinical trials in Australia and New Zeland by Emphron Informatics, a data management and biostatistics contract research organization (CRO). Full press release within.

(Cambridge, MA) August 13, 2007 � Akaza Research, LLC announced today that OpenClinica Enterprise is being adopted by Emphron Informatics, a data management and biostatistics contract research organization (CRO) in Queensland, Australia. Emphron will use OpenClinica Enterprise to help it better manage its customers� clinical trials throughout Australia and New Zealand.

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