Tag Archives: Healthcare IT
Get To “Meaningful Use” Faster …
Ignoring the current firestorm concerning health care reform that is sweeping the country; I would like to focus on the major health care event of 2009 that seems to have slipped under the radar but is the cornerstone of all future health care reform.
As part of the stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the President signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. This act includes billions of dollars in incentive payments through Medicare to digitize and automate the health care industry starting in 2011 and going until 2015, with the goal of providing the platform for the implementation of a nationwide interoperable, privacy-protected health information technology infrastructure. What this infrastructure will be is being worked out now by various committees established by the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Dr. David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P.. However, the starting point for these committees was defined, and incentive payments will only be dispersed if providers meet the following high level tenets: (more…)
Saving Lives with Data Integration
I must admit, we tend to focus mainly on the economic value of data.
It is true that data integration is a powerful discipline to help organizations save costs and deliver impressive business results. What is even more impressive is the fact that it is also saving lives, even as we speak.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of learning how our healthcare customers are using our solutions for better diagnostics and preventive medical practice.
One of the major medical centers in the US developed a clinical intelligence system to improve quality, safety and efficiency of patient care. The organization took a best-in-class model to allow clinicians to build their own system and automate clinical workflow for over a million outpatient activities. Despite the success of providing innovative and state-of-the-art point-of-care solutions, this approach created data silos from over 75 applications and heterogeneous databases that were not integrated.