Open standards are important with healthcare systems. The robustness of these systems are literally life-and-death matters; it's important that experts can see the code and evaluate whether it works as it should.
You make excellent points, Mitch, regarding the politics. Functionally, yes, the exchanges were started in advance of Obamacare, BUT most people ARE associating it with Obamacare. So the reality is that it will have a political flavor and those opposed will definitely be slow or resistant to joining the health networks.
You also make an excellent point, again recognizing the politics, that the full development of networks is not going to succeed until the physician/consumer acceptance is achieved. Most of the efforts now are still top-down and there are a lot of smaller medical groups and physicians who have not bought into the concept and don't see the need.
It's a real shame politics is involved in healthcare. It's also a shame money is involved. But since that's life in the big city (and the small village!), I think it's important that healthcare organizations, their IT departments, and government agencies -- along with insurance and all other stakeholders -- move as quickly yet safely as possible toward secure networks that can share information.
My orthopedist loves the EHR his practice uses; it's the one used by one of our three local hospital chains, and it allows him to look-up patients' records via his smartphone or iPad when they go to the ER and he gets a call. In the past, he told me, he either had to go to his office or - more likely - send one of his assistants, which cost him (then the patient and/or insurer) money to review the patient's chart for medications, history, etc. Now he looks them up on-the-fly, no matter where he is. Dr. O credits this with saving him countless hours and dollars since his office implemented it a year or two ago.
@Dhagar - I do believe the HIEXes will be formed. The HIEs are running well in many states and have already connected many silos. The promise of data for the betterment of public health outcomes is great.
@Kim - I am not sure I understand the question. We establish standards of practice and we issue certificates and licenses. Not sure why we would not establish standards in IT and information security and privacy.
@Alison - many HIEs started organically but if you will have networks communicate, you need standards and that is where collaboration and standards development was facilitated by the US government and incentives provided to soften the initial investments.
No one can argue with the value of exchanging healthcare information electronically. But is the current approach too centralized, too top-down, too rigid?
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
