Category Archives: Uncategorized

Interoperability Fears

When you get right down to it, lots of individuals and organizations fear interoperability. I am finding a great deal of resistance to the notion of the real deal of single sign-on longitudinal type record across organizations interoperability. Most want to only emit little squirts of electronic data and only under pressure to do so.

Many fear ‘their’ records and ‘their’ patients being ‘stolen’ from them by other organizations, practitioners or whomever. Because the ‘other’ organizations and practitioners will steal but they won’t. Classic Prisoner’s Dilemma thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Those fears are very powerful and in my opinion not rational in the face of a nationwide doctor shortage. Convincing others to change under those emotional circumstances is very difficult. I am wrestling with that now.

My fear is that classic interoperability notions and architectures ‘work’ about as well as government ‘works’. I further fear what the government might promulgate in the name of interoperability when it isn’t a software issue.

Demonstrating Open-Source Healthcare Solutions (DOHCS) 2009 Conference

THIRD ANNUAL DEMONSTRATING OPEN-SOURCE HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS (DOHCS) CONFERENCE LAUNCHES ANNUAL LINUX GATHERING

Lend Your Voice to this Crucial Discussion as America Transitions to a New Era

Arguably, the unique elements of the 2008/2009 recession combined with a change in administration and governing philosophy constitute a unique historical moment as demonstrated by ongoing events:

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Editorial: HIMSS Prefers Unacceptable Status Quo

Representative ‘Pete’ Stark recently put forth H.R. 6898 in which federal government coordination of open source and Veterans Affairs VistA software through the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) can occur. Despite the recent formation of an Open Source working group within HIMSS, the proprietary vendor dominated Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is now officially opposed to the open source and VistA aspects of the bill saying that the Federal Government has no role in this. HIMSS is now officially in favor of more patient deaths by medical errors, further slow adoption of electronic medical records, protection for ‘black box’ medicine, continued high expense of health information technology and continued poor care in the United States. Continue reading

OpenClinica 2.2 Provides Enhanced Features for Popular Open Source Electronic Data Capture Software

OpenClinica version 2.2 is now available for download. Full press release after the Read More break.

(Cambridge, MA) December 18th, 2007 – Akaza Research announces a new production release of the OpenClinica clinical research software designed for electronic data capture and clinical data management. This new release provides a long list of enhancements across numerous areas of the software. Highlights include:

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Webinar on open source i2b2 (CTSA research) planning

i2b2 (http://www.i2b2.org) recently launched open source project focused on providing research IT tools for building deidentified research data repositories. UMass Medical School is adopting the technolgy but learned that there were many non-software issues like a data governance strategy that needed to be addressed in order to meet compliance and organizational needs. Ralph Zottola is presenting in a webinar to describe the planning and open source tool selection process.

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SCALE 5x – Open Source Conferences in Los Angeles This Week

SCALE 5x, the 2007 Southern California Linux Expo will be held in Los Angeles, CA this weeken On Feb 9-11, 2007. It will include: 50+ seminars, 70+ exhibitors, BoFs, and more. Highlighted speakers will include Chris Dibona, Don Marti, Ted Haeger, Jono Bacon, and others. Exhibitors include: Dell, IBM, Verio, Redhat, GroundWork Open Source, ReactOS, Haiku OS, and PostgreSQL. One lucky attendee will win a Dual Xeon 1U Rackmount Server from Silicon Mechanics. Two other conference to be held on Friday Feb 9th include: Women In Open Source, and Open Source Health Care Summit.

Health Affairs Issue on Health IT Policy

The September 2005 issue (subscription required) of Health affairs is devoted to Health IT public policy. An excerpt from one of the abstracts reacting to a RAND report on building a National Health Information Network: ‘…The current fascination with electronic medical records (EMRs) is not new. For decades, vendors have capitalized on this enthusiasm. But hospitals and clinics have ended up with little to show for their large outlays. Indeed, computing at a typical hospital has not gotten much beyond what was available twenty-five years ago. The RAND analysis continues the tradition of hope and hype. Unfortunately, behind their impressive predictions of savings lie a disturbing array of unproven assumptions, wishful thinking, and special effects…’

AMA: CMS takes baby step toward national network

AMA News has a story about CMS efforts with VistA Office Electronic Health Record or VOE: ‘The grand plans of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to create a national health information network will soon be off to a humble start. CMS plans to recruit five to 10 small group practices to test what it hopes will become a widely used electronic medical record. However, if physicians were hoping to get a free system from the CMS, they’re out of luck. Even those participating in the test will have to pay.

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