The Guardian is reporting on Bill Gates upcoming trip to Britain: ‘Alan Milburn, the health secretary, has enlisted Bill Gates to help pull the health service out of the stone age in information technology. The Microsoft chairman will fly to Britain this week to tell chief executives of NHS trusts how to develop integrated systems to produce improvements in the speed and quality of patient care…’ It will be interesting to see what happens if MS goes into this in a big way since historically healthcare has swallowed one health IT reformer after another.
Senate votes to delay HIPAA deadline
The U.S. Senate approved a delay on the HIPAA deadline on November 27th. If this makes it through the House of Reps the deadline could be pushed back to Oct 2003. Story is here…
Scientists push to open source code for genetic research
There is an interesting debate regarding the need for opening software source code used in genetic research when publicly funded. This as opposed to exclusive licensing agreements made with private companies: a double bill for tax payers, says Harry Mangalam, of tacg Informatics in Irvine, Calif.
Georgia to move to paperless claims
The Atlanta Business Chronicle (registration required) is reporting: ‘…Leaders from Georgia hospitals and managed-care companies have found something to agree on for a change.
They’re developing a broad, new paperless system designed to speed up insurance claims processing, reduce medical errors and save money for the entire health-care community…So far such a system is mostly talk. But with new regulations looming under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) act, which will require health systems to do many functions electronically, plans are moving forward…’ I wonder if the resulting software will be public domain?
IBM to Build Mammogram Linux/AIX/Windows Grid
IBM is announcing an initiative with the University of Pennsylvania to build a grid of computers running Linux, AIX, and Windows for breast cancer screening and detection: “Once a patient’s mammograms are loaded into the system, they can be evaluated with powerful tools that isolate abnormalities very quickly by comparing current X-rays with those from previous years,” said Dr. Robert Hollebeek, director of the university’s National Scalable Cluster Lab. From the article, it appears that Linux will be doing the heavy lifting at the ‘regional hub’ level.
Live from the AMIA conference in Wash. D.C.
We are reporting live from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)fall conference. The conference this year is being held in the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington D.C. I’ll be giving the first annual Linux Medical News Open Source Medical Achievement Award as well as sending updates to this article as they occur.
This is the first time I’ve flown since 9/11 and I was flying into Reagan National airport as well. As you can imagine, security was heavy at Bush International in Houston. My id was checked 3 times, laptop was scanned separately and I didn’t think about taking my Palm V out of my pocket. This set off the scanner and earned me a wand and frisk search. Two soldiers carrying rifles were in evidence which was a first for me to see them in a US airport.
I arrived in Washington late Saturday night and took Washington’s excellent Metro to the hotel and spent the night. Today I received a phone call from Dan Johnson, MD. Many of the open source medical software people will be getting together at 5:00pm in the lobby as well as at 7:30pm for dinner.
Johnson is something of the patriarch of open source software, realizing its potential long before just about anyone else. His son also happens to be kernel manager for RedHat. He is going to be taking over David Pepper, MD’s role as moderator of the open source medical software panel Monday. Dr. Pepper was held up in Arizona and may not be able to make it because of ticket confusion.
That’s it for now.
MSNBC: FDA Approves Ingestible Camera
MSNBC has an article with pictures of a truly cool device that is now FDA approved: An ingestible camera in a capsule.
‘…The camera can take pictures of the small intestine, a 20-foot-long section that had been a �blind spot� to current diagnostic tools, said Dan Schultz, deputy director of the FDA office that reviewed the camera.
�The main advantage is that it traverses the entire length of the small intestine. Current technology we have is pretty much limited to being able to visualize the upper part of the intestine,� Schultz said.
GNUmed Web Site Updated, Screenshots Available
I haven’t visited the GNUmed site in awhile, so LinuxMedNews is a little behind in reporting this, but it looks like the web site was substantially updated in June. It also looks like the project is coming along with a page showing interface design goals and screenshots. Project discussion group subscription is available here.
GNUmed is Python and PostgreSQL based. From the web site:
The Gnumed group supports Open Source Software and its application to medical uses.
The major project of the group is to develop a medical software package that is
- open source
- secure
- respecting patient privacy
- based on open standards
- flexible
- fully featured
- networked (client-server architecture)
- easy to use
- multi platform
- multi lingual
Wired: ‘Wall Streets Dirty Software Secret’
Wired has an article quoting Morgan Stanley Dean Witter System Administrator Phillip Moore at the O’Reilly Open Source convention: ‘…Open-source software is Wall Street’s dirty little secret, Moore said. For some reason, none of the financial companies like to admit that they use Perl, Linux and Apache, but all the firms are teeming with it because it’s the only way to get software to conform to the varying needs of a big business…’ More quotes within.
Sometimes you call the 800-number and the person on the other end can’t even spell the product you need help for,” he quipped. Or the company goes out of business, and a firm is left holding some software it doesn’t have the legal right to fix.
With open software, I can make small changes to the code without having to go back to the company. We spend frightening sums of money on commercial stuff, and we have been repeatedly burned by the companies,” Moore said.
So what’s gone wrong? Many things, he said. Commercial software firms are slow to fix bugs. They have paltry support…’
E&M Guidelines Call for Action
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson has announced ‘…that the current efforts being undertaken by the Department regarding Evaluation and Management (E+M) guidelines have been postponed. The announcement was made at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee…’ This is an effort to create usable billing codes similar to the AMA’s CPT billing codes. Unlike the AMA’s CPT codes which require a fee for use, these will be in the public domain. This presents a great opportunity for U.S. physicians to really open up the discussions concerning E&M guidelines and even CPT’s.
I *URGE* physicians to write to the contact address below. Introduce the concept of open discussions to these people. Maybe one of you could even start a yahoogroups list or sponsor a mailinglist yourself. :->
From: HBMA Announcement List [mailto:announce@listserv.hbma.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 6:00 PM
To: announce@listserv.hbma.com
Subject: Evaluation and Management Guidelines Sidelined!
July 19, 2001
MEMORANDUM via e-mail
To: HBMA Membership
From: Debra Hardy Havens, Bill Finerfrock, and Matt Williams
Re: Evaluation and Management Guidelines Sidelined
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson announced on
July 19 that the current efforts being undertaken by the Department
regarding Evaluation and Management (E+M) guidelines have been
postponed. The announcement was made at a hearing of the House Ways and
Means Committee.
The written testimony provided by the Secretary is as follows:
Another bold step that I want to announce today is a change in our
development of the new Evaluation and Management (E+M) guidelines that
physicians use to bill Medicare for their doctor visits. We know that
physicians’ primary work is to provide clinical care, not
documentation. We have been working on a third version of the
guidelines, which are based on the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology
(CPT) that physicians use to bill insurance companies. Physicians found
the first two sets of guidelines, developed in 1995 and 1997,
cumbersome. We agree, and have been working with a contractor, Aspen
Systems, to improve them, but physicians have continued to express
concern that these guidelines are hindering, not helping, the delivery
of appropriate patient care.
We had hoped that this current effort would be a way to reduce burdens
on physicians, but it appears it needs another look. So I have directed
Aspen Systems to stop their work on this current draft while we reassess
and re-tune our effort. Additionally, I am turning to the physician
community to help design constructive solutions. After six years of
confusion, I think it makes sense to try to step back and assess what we
are trying to achieve. We need to go back and re-examine the actual
codes for billing doctor visits. For the system to work, the codes for
billing these visits need to be simple and unambiguous. I look forward
to working with the AMA and other physician groups to simplify the codes
and make them as understandable as possible.
More details are forthcoming on the July 19 Ways and Means hearing. In
the meantime, please contact us with questions or comments.
Please direct any response to:
Bradley J. Lund, Executive Director
Healthcare Billing and Management Association
1550 S. Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 201
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
(877) 640-4262-Ex: 203-telephone
(949) 376-3456-Fax
brad@hbma.com-e-mail
www.hbma.com -web site