PHRs: Cogmedix Provides Medical Device Storage and Order Fulfillment Services for Telcare Medical Supply

WORCESTER, Mass., March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Continuing to meet the complex needs of medical device companies, Cogmedix, a US-based, ISO13485-certified, FDA compliant contract manufacturing and services company, will provide Massachusetts-based Telcare Medical Supply with FDA compliant storage and order fulfillment services for their Class II medical device, Telcare BGM.

Telcare's FDA and HIPAA-compliant solution, Telcare BGM, is the world's first cellular-enabled glucose meter. Paired with Telcare's back-end clinical server and a suite of smartphone applications, the Telcare BGM(TM) blood glucose meter provides a complete ecosystem of care. Telcare's FDA-cleared HIPAA-compliant server connects directly to electronic medical record systems and is accessible via a secure, online portal where users and their caregivers can monitor current and historical health information readings, set up messaging options delivered directly to the meter, adjust personalized blood glucose target zones, and print health records reports.

"Telcare will leverage the Cogmedix team's flexibility and compliance expertise, while taking advantage of the company's controlled inventory management with environmental monitoring," said David Bjork, President of Telcare Medical Systems. "Working with Cogmedix offers us the flexibility to deploy our own inventory management software at their facility, while enabling the Cogmedix team to be a seamless extension of our business management processes."

"While Cogmedix can expertly manage the entire medical device manufacturing and fulfillment process, we are also happy to partner with companies like Telcare that require a subset of our expertise for various stages of their outsourcing strategy," said Matt Giza, General Manager, Cogmedix. "Our work with Telcare demonstrates our order fulfillment capabilities, including the ability to store in appropriately segregated, monitored and controlled facilities, combined with receiving orders, and picking, packing, and shipping serialized and lot controlled inventory. Our service will help enable Telcare to focus on continued product innovation and their customer call center, while optimizing their overhead cost structure."

About Cogmedix Cogmedix is a US-based, FDA QSR compliant, ISO 13485 certified contract manufacturer for medical and clinical devices. A subsidiary of Coghlin Companies Inc., Cogmedix focuses on the production of Class I and Class II medical and clinical devices for the critical care, home healthcare, emergency room, and industrial laboratories markets. Cogmedix focuses on aligning itself with companies seeking a compliant, conscientious, cost effective, domestic manufacturing resource to assist them with volume turnkey manufacturing. For more information about Cogmedix, please visit www.cogmedix.com .

Read more at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cogmedix-provides-medical-device-storage-and-order-fulfillment-services-for-telcare-medical-supply-2012-03-15

PHR: Emerging Electronic Health Information Exchange Systems Don't Meet Patient Needs

From The Sacramento Bee:

Health care  organizations need to do more to help patients realize the full benefits of electronic data from emerging health information exchange systems, according to a new study commissioned by Consumers Union  that appears in the March 2012 Health Affairs.  The study examines how well five major California health care  organizations are meeting the needs of patients and communities in the use of their electronic data and offers important lessons for the rest of the country. 

"Electronic health information exchange holds great promise for improving patient care and outcomes," said Mark Savage, senior attorney for Consumers Union, the nonprofit advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.   "Health care  organizations are making progress developing these systems but they must provide patients with greater access to their electronic medical data and the ability to monitor who is accessing this information to maximize benefits and limit potential privacy risks.  Patient and public health must be at the center of these efforts."

The study was funded by the California HealthCare Foundation  and assesses the extent to which these efforts are meeting the needs of patients and communities based on a set of principles developed by California organizations representing consumers and patients.  The independent study was carried out by Robert H. Miller, Ph.D., a health economist and faculty member atUniversity of California,  San Francisco. 

In June 2010, Consumers Union joined fifteen other organizations representing California patients and consumers to develop nine principles for electronic personal health information exchange .  The principles aim to improve patient and population health care  by increasing the availability and use of patient data while protecting patients' privacy.

The consumer principles balance patients' various needs—for example, coordinating health care and information among the patient and diverse providers in multiple organizations; ensuring the security and privacy of personal health information; designing systems that can be easily used by non-English speakers and person with disabilities; and accessing safety and quality data about providers and treatments. 

The 2009 stimulus bill  passed by Congress provided up to $27 billion in incentives for physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic health record systems.  The law also provided an additional $2 billion for activities that encourage meaningful use of electronic health information exchange.  It set a strategic goal of achieving electronic health records  for every person in the United States by 2014.

In theory, electronic health information should enable a patient's providers to share information about the patient's health status and current medications and to remind themselves about services the patient needs.  The patient should be able to review health records  via a web-based patient portal; possibly correct or add information; communicate with providers; view reminders of needed services; and access educational materials tailored to various health issues.  Despite its potential benefits, electronic information sharing  can entail risks for patients, especially loss of privacy and misuse of data. 

Medical tattoos offer important health information

From WPSD Local 6 News:

Tattoos have long served as fashion statements, but a small number of Americans are now relying on them for a more practical, potentially lifesaving purpose: to warn first responders about important medical conditions.

Some medical tattoos are being used to take the place of bracelets that commonly list a person's allergies, chronic diseases or even end-of-life wishes.

"Bracelets are nice, but something as strong as a tattoo ... that is a strong statement," said Dr. Ed Friedlander, a Kansas City pathologist who has "No CPR" tattooed in the center of his chest, where a paramedic would see it.

Friedlander, 60, got the tattoo to emphasize his decision to forgo CPR if his heart stops.

Medical tattoos don't appear to carry much legal weight. It's unclear whether an ambulance crew racing to treat a gravely ill patient could honor a request such as Friedlander's based on the tattoo alone.

But the markings do offer a simple and permanent way to give rescuers important health details.

Melissa Boyer, of Nashville, Mich., wore bracelets for years to identify her as a diabetic, but she kept losing or breaking them. The 31-year-old decided months ago to get a personal health information 3 1/2-inch tattoo on her left forearm that includes the medical symbol and identifies her as a Type 1 diabetic. It also declares her allergies to penicillin and aspirin her vital medical history.

"It's been 29 years that I've had (diabetes), and I went through I-don't-know-how-many medical records bracelets," she said. "I went and got the tattoo, and it made life easier."

The American Medical Association does not specifically address medical tattoos in its guidelines. But Dr. Saleh Aldasouqi, an endocrinologist at Michigan State University, hopes that might change.

Aldasouqi, who has written about the tattoos, has seen them among his diabetic patients and feels they are becoming so popular that the medical profession needs to help guide their development.

"My intention has been to bring this issue to the surface so that medical organizations can have a say in that," he said. "When you just Google it, you're going to find hundreds of stories and discussions, but no medical say. So I feel we leave our patients kind of afloat."

It would be helpful, for instance, if the tattoos were uniform or placed in the same area of the body so responders would know where to look, he said.

"My perspective is that we as physicians need to be involved in this," he added.

Aldasouqi does not advocate for or against the tattoos, but he says patients and doctors should discuss the idea beforehand.

If one of his diabetic patients sought a tattoo, Aldasouqi would recommend using a licensed tattoo artist and carefully controlling blood sugar during the procedure.

The National Tattoo Association, a nonprofit that raises awareness about tattooing, does not track the numbers or styles of tattoos. Sailor Bill Johnson, a spokesman for the association, said he does about one medical tattoo a year at his shop in Orlando, Fla.

"Nine times out of 10, it's either allergic to something, penicillin or peanuts," he said.

PHR: NIST to test EHR usability

From Fierce EMR:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has decided to tackle the problem of poor electronic health record usability, asking EHR vendors to share their products with the agency so it can research how they work, according to an iHealthBeat report .

According to NIST's Federal Register notice , the agency plans to conduct research designed to develop a set of guidelines/standards for usability of EHRs and develop a framework for assessing their "performance oriented" usability. NIST also may examine the EHR health information systems' relevant instructions, documentation and error messages. It will release its findings in a report.

NIST estimates that it will take a year to conduct the research, and vendors can't make modifications to products being researched during that time. The agency does assure vendors that it will keep the PHRs protected, applying the same high security measures in place in its main headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., even if testing is performed off-site. NIST will not accept personal health information for this project. It will report any usability problems to the vendor.

This is not the first time that NIST, which has a keen interest in EHRs, has expressed concern about EHRs' usability. In a 108-page report  released last fall, NIST noted that EHR usability was "critical" but that EHRs were harder to use than they should be. The report called for further studies to assess the problem and recommended that a usability protocol be developed for the medical history products.

PHR Provider ZweenaHealth.com Featured in IT Blog DigitalOlympus.com Health Technology Article

Personal health record (PHR) provider ZweenaHealth.com was recently featured in an article on the IT blog DigitalOlympus.com about the challenges facing healthcare consumers in the US who may have to change providers frequently and are unable to track their medical histories. It also showed how Zweena presents a safe, workable and trusted solution to this problem. Zweena LLC is a provider of online PHR and health information technology services that assembles patient medical records directly from doctor's offices, organizes and digitizes them to create an electronic health record that provides updated health information that is safe, actionable, and easy to understand, manage and share.

The DigitalOlympus.com IT blog article on how Zweena aggregates user medical records showed how one of the biggest challenges facing consumers when it comes to their health is the ability to manage, consolidate and track their medical history.

It also explored the dilemma of how every time patients change a healthcare provider, they need to somehow reproduce their medical records for the new provider, and yet maintain their privacy – a situation exacerbated by an increasingly mobile population.

The article then went on to highlight Zweena (http://www.zweenahealth.com), an online Personal Health Record (PHR) service for consumers to manage and protect their health records, as a trusted, safe and practical solution that is increasing in its recognition and adoption nationwide.

"Zweena is essentially a digital medical records aggregator that takes care of everything; from collecting paper records, to translating through the jargon, to securely storing it all online. Customers no longer have to dig through filing cabinets or call up all the doctors they’ve seen over the years. It’s all online, secured, and easy to manage and access," says the article.

"Medical records form the overall health picture. Being an empowered medical consumer starts with having access to this vital data,” says Zweena CEO John Phelan.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/590118#ixzz1mgMpPMBk

MMRGlobal Invites HIMSS Attendees to Make Millions in Stimulus Monies and a Chance to Win With the Bob Lorsch "Win a Million System"

MMRGlobal, Inc} a leading provider of Personal Health Records (PHRs) and electronic document management and imaging systems for healthcare professionals, today announced it will kick off Phase 2 of the Company's MMR Stimulus Program to healthcare professionals at HIMSS in Las Vegas next week, February 20-24, to demonstrate how using its MMRPro system can make millions for doctors, hospitals and other healthcare professionals through patient upgrades on the MMRPatientView portal to a full-featured MyMedicalRecords Personal Health Record for a family of 10 including pets. The new program enables hospitals using selected EMR systems that do not use MMRPro to integrate MMRPatientView and participate in the Stimulus Program. The U.S. government is mandating that 90% of all patients be able to receive a copy of their personal health information electronically by 2014. MMR will demonstrate how it is ready to deliver that requirement today well in advance of 2014. To make sure attendees at the show get the message, MMR will also host a daily champagne bar in Booth #2062 to celebrate 2014 today.

Also participating with MMR in Booth #2062 will be MMR strategic partner UST Global, Jacques Blandin, Chairman and Founder of VisiInc, PLC in Australia, and Luo Jianhui, Vice President and Chairman of Unisoft Group, Unis-Tonghe Technology (Zhengzhou) Co., Ltd, MMR's joint venture partner in China. Additionally, there will be demonstrations of MMR services technology from Alcatel-Lucent's connected hospital telemedicine systems, 4medica and Interbit Data.

The Company will also call attention to its MMRPro suite of professional document management and imaging systems powered by Kodak and Fujitsu scanning solutions. Using the MMRPro system in conjunction with the MMR Stimulus Program, hospitals and physician groups can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from patient upgrades through MMRPatientView. At the same time, healthcare professionals can also comply with meaningful use requirements to provide patients with timely electronic access to their personal health information with MMR and get paid MMR Stimulus Program monies with most EMR systems in use and even if they do not accept Medicare or Medicaid.

PHR: Verizon, Health Evolution Partners To Promote Health IT

From Information Week:

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has struck a strategic relationship with Health Evolution Partners (HEP), an investment firm that will promote Verizon technologies such as its cloud computing, mobile connectivity, and software services to healthcare companies and provider organizations that HEP invests in.

Under the multiyear agreement announced Monday, HEP and Verizon Connected Healthcare Solutions, the company's health IT practice group, will identify health companies that can accelerate their growth strategy by adopting Verizon's technologies to support clinical workflow, data management, and the use of mobile devices to coordinate patient care and personal health information.

"We have almost 100 companies and a very large share of them--whether they are life science companies, health IT companies, or companies that deliver healthcare services--are all data-driven firms," David Brailer, chairman of Health Evolution Partners, told InformationWeek Healthcare.

[ Is it time to re-engineer your clinical decision support system? See 10 Innovative Clinical Decision Support Programs. ]

Brailer said these healthcare companies are fast-growing firms with $50 million to $200 million worth of revenue, and many of them have to grapple with managing more data as well as support a mobile workforce that is coordinating patient care at remote locations.

"It's not just that they need a smartphone or a tablet--that's easy. It is that they need an information architecture so that they can log on, people can know who they are, get access to the data they need without filling out a lot of paper forms--it's a whole different architecture," Brailer said.

As the pace of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and digitized medical images continues at a fast clip, many of these firms are depending on mobile connectivity, information access, software services, and other technology that Verizon already has developed.

According to Brailer, the partnership with Verizon will enable these companies to have greater access to broadband networks, video-based technologies, and wireless devices that incorporate geo-location capabilities and sensors that are changing the way health organizations deliver care.

"To us, this partnership makes perfect sense. We've joined with a batch of leading-edge new companies across a whole spectrum of healthcare that can apply a lot of different PHR technologies and medical records software services," Dr. Peter Tippett, vice president and chief medical officer, Verizon Connected Healthcare Solutions, toldInformationWeek Healthcare. "We've been building a lot of technologies to help enable the healthcare ecosystem that we think will transform the whole healthcare industry, but to do this we need to be partnered with companies like the ones Health Evolution Partners are invested in."

Health Evolution Partners has investments in providers and companies operating in several sectors of the healthcare industry, including:

-- Healthcare providers and payers, and companies that provide services to these two groups. This includes ambulatory care providers, clinical and administrative facility services, managed care services, and consumer-driven healthcare firms.

-- Health IT companies that help improve care delivery, financial management, consumer engagement or research, and discovery. These companies provide technology in a variety of areas including cloud computing, enterprise solutions, digital media, online services, process automation, revenue cycle management, and network transactions within the healthcare industry.

PHR: Personal health budgets and NHS Continuing Healthcare

From Department of Health:

The Department has published a discussion paper which explores personal health budgets for people receiving NHS Continuing Healthcare. This is aimed towards healthcare professionals who will have a specific role in this initiative or are considering the future implementation of personal health budgets. Personal health budgets and NHS Continuing Healthcare is the first of a number of informative documents on the subject.

Personal health records budgets are currently being piloted in the NHS in England, with over 2,700 participants across 20 sites. A number of sites are piloting personal health budgets with people eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare. In October 2011, the Secretary of State for Health announced that subject to the evaluation, by April 2014 everyone in receipt of NHS Continuing Healthcare will have a right to ask for a personal health budget, including a direct payment. This will form part of a broader rollout of personal health budgets to people with long term health conditions.

A personal health information budget is an amount of money that is allocated to an individual to allow them to meet their health and well-being needs in a way that best suits them. At the heart of a personal health budget is a care plan which sets out the individual’s health (and social care) needs and includes the desired outcomes, the amount of money in the budget and how this will be spent. The care plan has to be agreed between the individual and the professional, before being checked and signed off by the NHS.

Personal health information technology budgets potentially offer greater integration of health and social care for both individuals who need care and their carers, and better partnership working between the NHS and local authorities. Personal health budgets and NHS Continuing Healthcare provides more information about the recent Government announcement and how these budgets are relevant to people receiving NHS Continuing Healthcare and how personal medical records budgets change the NHS Continuing Healthcare pathway.

PHR: Personal health data better protected by ISO standard

From The Finnancial Channel:

ISO has published a new technical specification which will increase protection of personal health information processed, stored and transferred by computer systems for subsequent use by clinicians and others in healthcare organizations, according to ISO.

ISO/TS 14265:2011, Health informatics – Classification of purposes for processing personal health information, defines a set of high-level categories of purposes for which such personal health information can be processed .

Electronic health records are used more and more. They involve the systematic electronic collection of health information about individual patients or populations, such as information about the physical or and mental health of an individual or provision of health services.

Health information is usually documented by healthcare professionals as part of the process of delivering care, and subsequently used to support the continuing care of each patient. However, PHR information might also be needed and used to enable the healthcare organization to manage its services better and more safely, and for a wider range of purposes such as public health, education and research.

Information may at times need to be shared with other organizations. For ethical and legal reasons, health information technology should only be used for the purposes for which it was collected or created. Up to now there has been no standard listing of the possible kinds of purpose of use of personal health information.

Report: Electronic health records still need work

From CBS Money Watch: 

America may be a technology-driven nation, but the health care system's conversion from paper to computerized records needs lots of work to get the bugs out, according to experts who spent months studying the issue.

Hospitals and doctors' offices increasingly are going digital, the Bipartisan Policy Center says in a report released Friday. But there's been little progress getting the computer systems to talk to one another, exchanging data the way financial companies do.

"The level of health information exchange in the U.S. is extremely low," the report says.

At the consumer level, few people maintain a personal health record on their laptop or electronic tablet, partly due to concerns about privacy, security and accuracy that the government hasn't resolved.

"How will sensitive health data be kept confidential and secure in digital data-sharing environments?" the report asks. "Many consumers ... are waiting for a reassuring answer to this question."

The report offers a window on progress toward a goal set by President Barack Obama, and President George W. Bush before him, that everyone in the United States should have an electronic health record by 2014.

While making no predictions, the report offers a collection of details indicating that the goal is a long shot at best.

"Will 100 percent of our nation have electronic health records by 2014?" asked Janet Marchibroda, who directs the center's health records technology initiative. "I would say getting to that last mile is difficult." She expects the majority of hospitals and doctors to meet the goal, but it's another matter when it comes to consumers.

In politically polarized Washington, the center tries to tackle national problems from a pragmatic perspective. The report, more than six months in the making, was produced by a panel representing hospitals, doctors, insurers, consumers and technology companies. The review was led by two former senators with ties to the health care industry, Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Republican Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Electronic medical records are seen as a crucial component in creating a system that's more efficient and less prone to error. The government has committed up to $30 billion to encourage this shift, mostly through incentive payments to hospitals and doctors that were authorized in 2009 under Obama's economic stimulus law. Payments started flowing last year.

Healthcare Analyst Values MMRGlobal Patents at $300-800 Million

From Market Watch:

MMRGlobal, Inc. MMRF -0.25% ("MMR"), a leading provider of Personal Health Records ("PHR"), MyEsafeDepositBox storage solutions and electronic document management and imaging systems for healthcare professionals, today announced that The MichaelBassGroup ("MBG"), a leading investment banking and strategic advisory services firm ( www.michaelbass.com ), issued a special report January 20, 2012 ( http://michaelbass.com/PDF/JAN20MMRF.pdf ) citing the global market for Personal Health Records at $19 billion, and focusing on the patents issued, pending and owned by MyMedicalRecords, Inc., the Company's wholly owned-subsidiary, in connection with a METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING ONLINE MEDICAL RECORDS, and a METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING ONLINE RECORDS. In their report, MBG valued these patents at a minimum of $300 million to as much as $800 million. The patents cover numerous claims involving the provision of Personal Health Records and other health information and document management systems and technologies. The patents (amongst other things) address the management of paper and other information contained in a Personal Health Record and deal with the fact that while doctors are migrating to Electronic Medical Records, they still receive an average of 1033 faxes per month of patient information.

According to the report, several movements are behind the growing popularity of PHRs, including social networking and the Health 2.0 movement. PHRs are also a tool for patient self-management on the Web. Many consumers have PHRs through their employers, health insurers, health providers or through independent vendors. One estimate indicates that 70 million people in the United States have access to personal health information.

The Company has already entered into a non-exclusive license agreement for $30 million with Surgery Center Management, LLC ("SCM"), $5 million of which became due on December 23, 2011. SCM purchased a cashier's check payable to MyMedicalRecords, Inc. as proof of funds, a copy of which has been given to the Company (see image). MMR has made demand on SCM to turn over the check and expects to bring a resolution to this matter through SCM Legal Counsel soon. Separately, the Company has also entered into a patent license agreement in Australia and other joint venture marketing and strategic partnership agreements in China.

The valuation was based on industry accepted patent evaluation methods, PatentValuePredictor.com, which was developed by Richard A. Neifeld and Dr. Martin Goffman. Dr. Neifeld holds a JD degree from George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Physics from Rutgers University and is the former chair of the Interference Committee of the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association. Dr. Martin Goffman holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Temple University and is the principal of Martin Goffman Associates. Patent Value Predictor reports are based on patented macroeconomic models for automatically valuing patents. The reports are backed by patent and financial databases, which record the proprietary statistics used to predict the potential market size, and a patent's predicted share of this market. Many factors, such as the number of patents in the technology area, profit margins, and the GDP, figure into the statistically predicted valuation. The report specifically excludes the Company's biotech assets from the valuation.

Should Every Patient Have a Unique ID Number for All Medical Records

As the U.S. invests billions of dollars to convert from paper-based medical records to electronic ones, has the time come to offer everyone a unique health-care identification number?

Proponents say universal patient identifiers, or UPIs, deserve a serious look because they are the most efficient way to connect patients to their medical data. They say UPIs not only facilitate information sharing among doctors and guard against needless medical errors, but may also offer a safety advantage in that health records would never again need to be stored alongside financial data like Social Security numbers. UPIs, they say, would both improve care and lower costs.

Privacy activists aren't buying it. They say that information from medical records already is routinely collected and sold for commercial gain without patient consent and that a health-care ID system would only encourage more of the same. The result, they say, will be more patients losing trust in the personal health records system and hiding things from their doctors, resulting in a deterioration in care. They agree that it's crucial to move medical history records into the digital age. But they say it can be done without resorting to universal health IDs.

Personal Health Record:E-Health vetting plan abandoned

From The Australian IT:

A broad range of bodies, including the Consumers Health Forum, the Australian Privacy Foundation, the Pharmacy Guild, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists, the Medical History Software Industry Association and individual vendors have called for the establishment of a broad-based new PCEHR governance structure.

But in an addendum to the PCEHR Concept of Operations issued late Wednesday, Health says the departmental secretary will take on the role permanently, with a small caveat that “another body established by a law of the Commonwealth may be prescribed by the regulations to be the System Operator in the future, if necessary”.

The policy previously stated that “The PCEHR health information system would be managed by a single System Operator under a governance model that would be defined in the future”.

Now, the department says: “Having the Secretary of the Department as the System Operator will ensure accountability and transparency of operations and coverage by commonwealth financial, data security and privacy arrangements.

“It will also allow a smooth transition from contractual governance arrangements established for the system build, and the ability to coordinate the necessary jurisdictional and stakeholder involvement.”

The operator will be aided by a Jurisdictional Advisory Committee, comprising one representative from each of the federal, state and territory health departments, and an Independent Advisory Council which includes healthcare provider, consumer and other sector stakeholder representatives, although observers have previously noted the operator is not obliged to heed any advice from either source.

When the PCEHR system commences operation, more than 500,000 health providers working across public and private healthcare organisations nationwide will have access to personal health information about their patients via a centralised record repository and indexing system.

Patients and providers will have to opt-in to this voluntary system, and consent arrangements will allow patients to control which providers can access personal health records.

But every Australian listed on the Medicare and Veterans Affairs databases has already been assigned a unique, 16-digit Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) through the identity and records matching service to be operated by Medicare, while providers have been issued Healthcare Provider Identifiers through their professional registration bodies.

The addendum also advises that healthcare organisations will have to agree to certain conditions around intellectual property rights, external auditing and access to information, to gain registration with the PCEHR system.

“This will require additional system functionality to maintain registration details and a process to support registration,” it notes.

Delta College Health Information Technology program still taking applicants for program

From MLive.com:

Delta College’s Health Information Technology program is looking for new students to sign up before thefederal funding that helps support the program runs out.

The program is designed for people with a health care or health information technology background to get training in three areas: clinician-practitioner, implementation manager and technical software support.

The program began in 2010 after Delta received $1.41 million out of $14.6 million given to 17 Midwestern community colleges to offer the medical history training. The money came from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“We are encouraging applications still,” said Sharon Leenhouts, health information technology program coordinator. “We can only give the scholarships until the resources have been exhausted.”

Leenhouts said the program has had about 30 graduates and another 270 currently in the program.

The program has open entry and open exit, so students can take courses whenever they want. But Dave Case, lead faculty with the Health Information Technology Department, said the program is designed to take about six months. An example of a student in the program, Case said, would be a nurse or medical assistant interested in improving their credentials.

“It adds to their resume, to their employability and their advancement,” Case said. “Our local hospitals are rapidly incorporating technology.”

The clinician or practitioner consultant track is for students who already are licensed professionals or have significant experience in federal, state or local public health agencies. The implementation managers track teaches students to manage health information technology systems and mobile adoption support teams. The third track, technical and software support, teaches students how to maintain and support technology systems in clinical and public and personal health information settings.

State of Illinois Selects InterSystems HealthShare for Statewide Electronic Health Records

From MarketWatch:

InterSystems Corporation, a global leader in software for connected care, today announced that InterSystems HealthShare(TM) has been selected as the technology platform for the Illinois Health Information Exchange. Estimated value of the contract is $7.25 million.

Building our electronic health record information exchange is a major step in transforming health care and helping patients," Governor Quinn said. "Statewide access to electronic records means that vital patient information will be instantly available to doctors and hospitals when it is needed most, improving health care delivery and saving lives."

Development of the Illinois HIE is funded through a federal grant program established to allow states to assist health care providers and hospitals with the exchange of electronic health records (EHRs). Illinois received $18.8 million over four years to develop this capacity, and the first phase of exchange services is expected to be available statewide in April 2012.

Comprehensive, Massively Scalable Solution

The statewide HIE network will provide seamless clinical information flow to more than 50,000 healthcare providers, payers and state agencies. It is expected to serve a patient population of 13 million individuals, according to Laura Zaremba, Director of the Illinois Office of Health Information Technology.

InterSystems HealthShare is a breakthrough software solution that provides the massive scalability needed to support Illinois' large patient population and a rich feature set that goes beyond basic HIE and interoperability requirements. It provides a unified strategic informatics platform designed to fulfill the requirements of regional health information and personal health records  exchanges and IDNs both now and in the future.

Patients should have online access to medical records, says report

From The Guardian:

NHS patients will be allowed to see and edit their medical records under proposals in a government-commissioned report.

The plan is contained in a report that an expert advisory group, headed by Professor Steve Field, the coalition's NHS troubleshooter, is finalising before handing it to the Department of Health.

The changes would enable patients to view their whole medical history, study the result of diagnostic tests and see what drugs they have been prescribed before. They would also be able to check on their next appointment and order a repeat prescription.

The NHS Future Forum will outline the significant extension of patients' rights in a report on how greater availability of information in the health service can improve treatment and make users of NHS services feel more involved and empowered.

The plan will help the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, finally realise his longstanding goal of an "information revolution" intended to help put patients more in control of their own care and health information.

The scheme could be operational in England inside three years, the forum believes.

One forum member said that in an age when citizens could access their bank account details from their home computer, it was "unsustainable" for existing restrictions on patients' access to their personal health records to continue.

Currently, patients' right to see their records is protected under the NHS Constitution but they have to apply for access and explain why they want to see them.

Push To Allow NHS Patients To See Medical Records Online

From TechWeek Europe:

NHS patients should be able to see their medical records online by 2015, under a proposal from the NHS Future Forum, a group of leading doctors advising the Government over its health reforms.

According to its proposals, the Forum’s idea is that people essentially “own” their medical personal health records, and should be able to see their medical history, download their case notes, and even see the comments made by GPs and medical staff (providing they can read the writing) about their particular case or ailment. Patients will also be able to order their repeat prescriptions and make appointments online, free-of-charge.

ONLINE PROPOSALS

“We fully support NHS patients having online access to their personal GP records,” Lord Howe, a health minister, was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph. “Our vision for a modern NHS is to give patients more information and control over their health.”

“That’s why the independent NHS Future Forum has continued to listen specifically on this issue and how we make it a reality for patients,” he said.

But the plans are likely to face opposition from some elements of the medical profession concerned over patient confidentially.

They could oppose the proposal because of fears that family or friends could gain access to sensitivehealth information about some patients. They may also have concerns that their confidential medical notes, giving frank, personal appraisals of the patients, will be viewed by the patient and could damage relationships.

Another worry is whether GP practices will actually be able to physically cope with digitising all their patients medical history records, and whether the NHS can actually deliver a workable system for these proposals.

POOR TRACK RECORD

Of course, the government will be acutely aware of previous-botched NHS computer projects in this regard, most notably the notorious NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) scheme.

The NPfIT system was proposed in 2002 by the then Labour government to provide better communications across the NHS infrastructure, based around a central database for patients’ medical records, scans and X-rays.

The project came under continuous criticism for rising costs and dubious management. The flawed plan was then inherited by the current Coalition government which in September, 2010, pledged to pull the plug on it.

A year later, the government finally confirmed it was writing off the costs and axing the project.