Australasian health IT week in review: November 21

Pulse+IT’s weekly round-up of Australian and New Zealand health, IT and eHealth news:

The tech inside Victoria’s $1bn cancer care facility
iTNews ~ Andrew Sadauskas ~ 20/11/2015

Using cutting-edge hospital technology to improve the healthcare experience of cancer patients is one of the main objectives in a $50 million IT deployment at a new healthcare and biomedical research facility in Melbourne.


GP business model heading over a cliff, study finds
Medical Observer ~ Julie Lambert ~ 20/11/2015

The traditional style of general practice will plunge over a cliff in a few years if the MBS rebate freeze and current care and payment models remain in place, a report predicts.


Chemotherapy services to be reintroduced at Royal Perth Hospital after critical report
ABC News ~ Andrew O’Connor ~ 19/11/2015

A comprehensive cancer treatment centre at Royal Perth Hospital will be reinstated as part of the WA Government’s response to a scathing report about the fragmentation of cancer services since the opening of Fiona Stanley Hospital.


Audit of GP clinics flags patient privacy risks
Australian Doctor ~ Tessa Hoffman ~ 19/11/2015

Lax security measures in GP clinics are putting patients’ electronic records at risk of privacy breaches, a government audit has found.


New operator aims for 20-30 per cent of PMS market within three years
NZ Doctor ~ Bruce Lee ~ 18/11/2015

A 20-30 per cent share of New Zealand’s practice management system market within two to three years is Australian Health IT company Best Practice’s goal, says chief executive Frank Pyefinch.


National telehealth service answers 18,000 calls in first weeks
NZ Doctor ~ Cliff Taylor ~ 17/11/2015

The national telehealth service which launched on 1 November has so far fielded around 18,000 calls – the vast majority of them for medical enquiries to Healthline.


Sharing info on drug-seeking ‘in patient’s best interests’
NZ Doctor ~ Virgina McMillan ~ 16/11/2015

Twenty-eight general practices, three pharmacies and an ambulance service have joined a network making it clear members can and will discuss drug-seekers’ behaviour with other health providers.


Goodbye PCEHR, hello My Health Record
Medical Observer ~ David Rowley ~ 16/11/2015

THE Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) will officially be re-branded as My Health Record, following the Senate’s passing of the eHealth bill with Labor and Greens support late last week.


Fifield rejects NBN cost ‘blowout’ criticism
Computerworld ~ Rohan Pearce ~ 16/11/2015

Describing the revised peak funding estimate for the National Broadband Network as a “blowout” robs the discussion of nuance, according to communications minister Senator Mitch Fifield.


Manad Plus goes native for care worker mobility

Melbourne-based aged care software vendor Management Advantage is currently rolling out a major new version of its Manad Plus care and management software to existing clients and is set to launch three new native apps that will allow nurses and carers to add observations and progress notes at the bedside through their phones, whether they be Apple, Android or Windows devices.

Management Advantage general manager Ben Sturzaker said he believed having a native app in each of the three apps stores was a first for residential aged care in Australia. Other vendors have web-based products that can run on mobile devices but they are either not native apps or all three operating systems are not catered for, he said.

While the apps can be used on tablet computers, Mr Sturzaker said they were optimised for smartphones.

“You can always install and run them on mobile tablets but at this stage we have designed the layouts for phones, because what we find is that smaller phone devices are better for nurses because they can put them in their pockets,” he said. “You need your hands when you are a nurse.

“Our main focus is the care workers who are working with the residents and want to capture or chart a behaviour code for ACFI or a bladder or bowel information. They may want to take a blood glucose level or observation and quickly pull out their phone, put in the data and sync it back to the main database. It will also work offline so if there is no WiFi or they are out of range, they can still use it.”

At present the main features of the apps relate to the Manad Plus care module, including progress notes and clinical charting needs. There are also some read-only views of patient data so nurses can look up someone’s care plan and what intervention is recommended as opposed to having to go back to a computer or carry around paper charts.

Nurses have access to each resident’s current interventions on a read-only screen, but also built in are contact details so if they need to call a family member or the resident’s doctor, they are linked to the person being attended to.

Mr Sturzaker said his team had also added in some features for managers, including the ability to view current ACFI funding levels.

“There’s a bit of a dashboard to give you an overview of data that is going into your system, but one thing that most of our clients will love is we have an evacuation item in there,” he said.

“It gives you your current evacuation list and their room numbers, so if you ever need to evacuate you just grab your mobile device, mark people off as you see them leaving the building, and keep a log to show you have accounted for everyone. You then also have access to family and GP contact details and the evacuation aids that you may need.”

Enabling the software in the cloud is on the future roadmap but Mr Sturzaker said there was no large demand for cloud services as yet.

“It depends on your definition of what is cloud,” he said. “A lot of our larger clients technically host their own cloud environment anyway in that their servers are all hosted somewhere, not necessarily on their premises, and all of their facilities technically remote in to the server.

“Most clients are running Terminal Services or Citrix so it’s basically a private cloud structure. We just don’t have a web front-end.”

Management Advantage has also waited before integrating with the PCEHR, which it will do eventually. “It was one of those things where until there was a major uptake, and there were enough hospitals doing discharge summaries and information that we could retrieve, we didn’t see the benefit,” he said.

“We’d rather put the time into things that would benefit our users and we’ve been more than happy with our decision considering the issues that have happened. Until it becomes a bit more mainstream and hospitals are providing discharge summaries en masse, and the residents have their own records and information we could extract, we’d prefer our development resources go into requests from our clients.”

The company has commenced rolling out Manad Plus version 5 to clients and has developed a change management program for them.

“We are taking them through that because the interface is changing and it’s important that we go through a proper process of change management to make sure that staff understand that you still can do a progress note but you use a different screen and it looks slightly different.

“We have a lot of analysis stuff in there for managers as well but we have kept it as simple as possible, which is one of the benefits of our old version for care workers, that it is easy to use.

“But we have added some extra analytics and being able to drill down into the data for the managers so they can see trends and what things are happening, so managers have a bit more analysis on their data.”

ePIP set to be tied to PCEHR meaningful use

The federal government plans to introduce changes to the Practice Incentives Program eHealth incentive (ePIP) from next February that are likely to see general practices required to show evidence of meaningful use of the PCEHR to continue to receive payments, which can be worth up to $50,000 a year.

The Department of Health has released a discussion paper on proposed changes to the ePIP, with figures showing that while 72 per cent of all general practices were receiving ePIP payments in the 2013-2014 financial year, only 16 per cent were actually uploading clinical information to the system.

5206 general practices are currently registered for the PCEHR – set to be renamed My Health Record – with 55,052 SHSs uploaded, but the department says that only 242 practices uploaded five or more shared health summaries in the six-month period between August 2014 and February 2015.

To be eligible for the current ePIP, introduced in 2012, practices have to fulfil five requirements: integrate healthcare identifiers into practice records, use a secure messaging service, have software that uses clinical coding, send the majority of prescriptions to an electronic script exchange, and register for and have software that is compliant with the PCEHR.

The department’s discussion paper proposes that the first four requirements remain the same, but that the fifth be changed from merely showing readiness to use the PCEHR to demonstrating actual meaningful use of the system.

It proposes that active and meaningful use be defined initially as the contribution of SHSs to patient records. Uploading other clinical information and viewing records would then be considered for inclusion as meaningful use in the second year of the scheme.

The question then becomes what should be the target – patient populations such as those with chronic and complex conditions for whom a chronic disease management (CDM) MBS item has been claimed; healthy patients with clinically relevant medical histories such as adverse reactions to medicines and allergies; or a percentage of the standardised whole patient equivalent (SWPE).

While the paper discusses linking payments to uploads for patients with a CDM plan, it makes clear that altering item numbers – as recommended by the 2013 Royle review – is not in the scope of the discussion paper.

Another possibility is linking the ePIP to completing training on the PCEHR and uploading a set number of SHSs each quarter. Whether to change the system to an annual measure rather than quarterly is also up for discussion.

Consultation on this paper closes on October 9 with a draft to be presented to the Practice Incentives Program Advisory Group (PIPAG) – which includes representatives from medical associations like the AMA, RACGP, ACRRM and NACCHO – on October 19.

The revised ePIP would then come into effect from the February 2016 payment quarter onwards.

QH hires commissioning expert to avoid problems in Sunshine

Queensland Health has hired a hospital commissioning expert to provide strategic advice during the commissioning of the Sunshine Coast Public University Hospital to try to avoid the problems that have beset the new Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane.

The Sunshine Coast hospital is due to open in November 2016, initially with 450 beds but with the ability to grow to over 738. It will be co-located on the Kawana health campus with the Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital, which opened in 2013.

Queensland Health Minister Cameron Dick said the appointment of a commissioning expert, Capital Insight’s Michael Allsopp, was one of the recommendations of the commissioning review into the opening of Lady Cilento.

The review, which led to the resignation of the chair of the board of Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, found that significant delays in building and commissioning the hospital led to an IT budget blow-out and reduced scope.

An earlier clinical review found that there was a great deal of confusion when the hospital opened due to unfamiliarity with the electronic medical records system and outpatients booking systems, problems with the age and functionality of some Queensland Health clinical systems and even a lack of video storage capability within the PACS system.

Mr Allsopp will provide strategic advice to the project in respect to commissioning and will be employed until December 2016, a month after the scheduled opening of the hospital.

“This role is about making sure that all of the individual pieces of the project come together and are ready to deliver the best possible health care from day one,” Mr Dick said.

“We do not want to see a repeat of last year’s bungled commissioning process at Lady Cilento which had a significant impact on staff, patients and their families. It was the hard work of a highly committed staff at LCCH which allowed the hospital to open safely.

“Mr Allsopp’s role will be to provide independent oversight and advice regarding commissioning of the new buildings and the operational and clinical services.”

Mr Allsopp was previously the executive director of strategic development for the Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) project, which had a successful operational start-up, and he is currently involved in preparing the new Royal Adelaide Hospital prior to its opening.

Mr Dick also outlined the future for Nambour General Hospital, which will hand over the role of the Sunshine Coast’s major referral hospital to the new facility.

Nambour will be reconfigured to deliver sub-acute rehabilitation services but will continue to have a major emergency department, elective surgery and medical inpatient capacity. It will also maintain its current level of 45 mental health beds.

Mr Dick said Nambour had not been able to provide rehab services since 2002.

“This service will start in 2017 and provide the necessary support to people recovering from strokes, major orthopaedic surgery, and a range of other conditions that require specialist rehabilitation services,” he said.

Qld’s ieMR set for third release but HBCIS still on drawing board

Existing implementations of clinical systems are the main beneficiaries of the funding announced for eHealth in last week’s Queensland state budget, although the long-awaiting replacement of the HBCIS patient administration system is still in the planning stage.

The Queensland government allocated $179 million to clinical and administrative support systems in the budget, a small reduction from the $200m the previous year, with the majority going towards the continued roll-out of the Cerner integrated electronic medical record (ieMR), the Mosaiq integrated oncology management system and an interoperability platform for information sharing.

(Pulse+IT incorrectly reported last week that extra money had gone to the continued roll-out of the intensive care clinical information system, iMDsoft’s MetaVision. A Queensland Department of Health spokesperson said no additional money had been allocated to this roll-out, with any future release of functionality set to be funded through ongoing recurrent costs.)

Two of the first sites for the Cerner roll-out – Princess Alexandra Hospital and Cairns Hospital – are set to go live with what Queensland Health is calling the “Digital Hospital” release of the ieMR this November.

This is the third tranche in what has been a very careful and staged roll-out of Cerner to nine hospitals, beginning with a medical record scanning function for five hospitals in stage one and the introduction of electronic orders and results, and allergies and adverse reactions in stage two.

The spokesperson said that following the Digital Hospital ieMR release at PAH and Cairns, other sites will be invited to express their interest in implementing it.

Cerner is currently being used at Townsville, Mackay, Royal Brisbane and Women’s, the new Lady Cilento Children’s, and Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service sites at Robina, Southport and Carrara.

Queensland’s The Viewer technology, which allows access to clinicians across the state to a clinical data repository holding a range of information such as referrals, alerts, diagnoses and clinical notes, has also been integrated into the ieMR.

The Viewer also provides access to the national PCEHR system and is live in over 200 sites in Queensland, with just some aged care and primary healthcare facilities in North West HHS still without the capability.

The Queensland Health spokesperson said a number of facilities in Cape York and the Torres Strait had recently become visible on The Viewer, providing clinicians with access to pathology and radiology data. Relevant mental health information is also available following the integration of The Viewer into the consumer integrated mental health application (CIMHA).

“With the recent integration of The Viewer in ieMR, patient safety and quality of care will be greatly improved with the ability for clinicians to instantly access to a patient’s full medical history,” the spokesperson said.

A replacement for the HBCIS PAS, on the other hand, is still in the planning stage. HBCIS is approaching 25 years in operation and was identified in Queensland’s 2007 eHealth strategy as needing to be replaced before it reached technical obsolescence this year.

Originally estimated to likely cost between $250 and $350m, a Queensland Audit Office (QAO) report in 2012 revised that cost up to over $440m.

HBCIS is managed by CSC, which inherited it following its acquisition of iSoft, but former Queensland Health CIO Ray Brown told a parliamentary inquiry in 2013 that CSC was likely to stop providing direct support this year.

Mr Brown said that a hardware upgrade was likely to be able to support HBCIS until 2019 or 2020, but warned at the time that the replacement would be particularly complex as the system was used for a range of functions besides patient administration.

Mr Brown told the inquiry that there were 165 separate HBCIS instances across the state that shared or integrated with over 80 other clinical and business systems.

The Queensland Health spokesperson said the replacement of HBCIS was one of the key ICT priorities for the department. “Funding has been secured to commence an implementation planning study to support the development of a detailed plan and preliminary business case,” the spokesperson said.

In addition to the ieMR and oncology system, funding from the 2015-2016 budget has also gone towards the critical infrastructure asset replacement program, involving telehealth equipment, telecommunications, National Broadband Network migration and storage.

There is also the contemporary workspace program, involving authentication and authorisation, active directory and Microsoft Office migration, and funding for an interoperability platform.

“[This] will enable information sharing to be leveraged in a more efficient, flexible and agile manner that will help to reduce costs, improve the quality of patient care, and support technical, corporate and clinical innovation,” the spokesperson said.

Datacom takes charge of ICT support services for Health

IT service provider Datacom says it has successfully completed the transfer of ICT infrastructure and support services from IBM to the federal Department of Health as part of its $242 million, five-year contract.

Datacom won the business off IBM in March this year after 15 years in the hands of Big Blue, with the deal also including the transfer of management of the department’s enterprise data warehouse from Accenture. Datacom now has a large team predominately located on site with DoH in Canberra.

Datacom’s ACT director Lisa Thorburn called the deal a “ground-breaking departure from traditional IT services outsourcing”.

“[It] is the first of its kind to be constructed solely around an outcomes-based, fully managed, consumption-based pricing model that provides Datacom with the autonomy to deliver a solution set which best fits the department’s needs,” Ms Thorbun said in a statement.

A tender for the contract was first issued in May last year, specifying a different approach from previous contracts.

The process was overseen by Paul Madden, who was then chief information and knowledge officer but is now the department’s special adviser for strategic health systems and information, in charge of technical strategy and policy development for eHealth.

Health& targets corporate wellness as platform launch nears

Melbourne-based digital health firm Health& is in the early stages of developing a product offering for the corporate market as it looks towards a full commercial launch of its integrated digital portal-personal health record platform at the end of the year.

Formerly known as Sonoa Health, Health& last month launched the first plank of its platform, an interactive content library covering hundreds of health topics that provides medically validated information aimed at consumers, accompanied by animations that can be used to improve health literacy.

Later this year, Health& plans to launch the second plank, adding a personal electronic health record, preventative health alerts and the capability to upload live data from fitness devices like Fitbits to the content library and health FAQ service. The company has registered as a healthcare provider organisations so will also have a link to the PCEHR in the future.

Consumers will have a personalised dashboard featuring their own EHR and access to what Health& is calling a ‘dynamic digital doctor’. The plan is to have a free version and an inexpensive paid version that consumers can also use to manage their family’s health affairs.

However, the long-term plan is much larger, with the aim of providing truly personalised information through the company’s knowledge acquisition report development system (KARDS), which uses artificial intelligence to connect different pieces of data and has the capability to learn.

Health& has hugely ambitious plans for its technology, which it believes can do to personalised healthcare what Facebook has done to communication. The ultimate aim is to promote preventative action and improve consumer health on a global scale.

In the meantime, it is preparing a package for the corporate wellness sector that includes some elements familiar to those who have used Microsoft’s HealthVault or the late Google Health offering.

Health& CEO John Stewart said the launch of the content library was successful, with over 20,000 people using the site in its first two weeks and significant chatter on social media.

“From a standing start there some pretty good statistics,” Mr Stewart said. “It validates that there is a big user demand for trusted, reliable health content on the internet.”

The marketing strategy for that launch was predominantly aimed at the general consumer, but Health& believes there are multiple different markets in which the platform will work, he said.

“From a consumer point of view, we think that the key elements of the platform that will get initial engagement from consumers are the preventative algorithms. From a corporate perspective, the concept would be to have a product that is of real benefit to their employees and their whole family unit.

“The actual product is designed to engage people in their healthcare, which is what a lot of corporate health and well-being initiatives are designed to do.”

Mr Stewart said Health& had taken the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ (RACGP) 17 preventive health measure recommendations and created some smart algorithms around them that will be able to categorise an individual’s risk factors.

Using the example of bowel cancer screening, rather than just have a system that just tells you to get screened when you turn 50, Health&’s system will be able to look at the individual’s risk factors based on relevant questions and answers or by extracting data from the EHR, or a combination of both.

For the corporate market, it will also be able to provide statistical analysis and benchmarking of the health and well-being of employees on a de-identified basis, Mr Stewart said.

“The consumer gets the benefit of the dashboard and the consumer health record and the algorithms that drive them to improve their health on a preventative basis, and the corporates get the benefit of this detailed dashboard analytics that shows here’s my employee base, how many of my employees have a chronic health condition, is there something endemic to the corporate environment that is creating a risk to the health and well-being of their employees?”

Mr Stewart said that while Health& shared some analytical similarities with the likes of Google Health, where those products fall down is in their lack of data gathering capability.

“That’s why our linkages to consumer devices like Fitbits and Apple watches makes the process much more seamless for the consumer,” he said. “Eventually – this won’t happen overnight – but eventually when the PCEHR is a really fulsome resource, then our linking to the health record will also make it seamless.

“Rather than just gather the information into a bucket, we analyse it and tell the user what that information means. That’s where the combination of medicine and IT really comes into it and that’s what makes it unique.”

Mr Stewart said the full platform will be ready for commercial release at the end of the year and in the meantime, the start-up is aiming at registering potential subscribers before it goes live. Interested parties can register online.

Clinically validated tablet technology for developmental delay

Monash University researchers have developed what they says is the world’s first tablet technology designed to assist children with developmental disabilities such as autism.

The gaming technology has been developed in association with DreamWorks contractor Torus Games and technology commercialisation firm Grey Innovation and is being commercialised by a spin-off company called Tali Health.

According to Tali Health, the front end of its technology is an attention measuring and training program for delivering interventions and measurements on everyday electronic devices that families, educators and clinicians can use in both rural and metropolitan regions.

At the back end is a powerful computer program that collects and analyses data each time a patient plays one of the computer games. Tali Health says the analysis of this data is used to prepare reports for clinicians for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes and then to monitor the progress of their patients, and, where necessary, adjust the treatment.

The technology has been tested in a pilot study aimed at determining whether using the games for 20 minutes five days a week over a five-week period leads to improved attention and focus.

Lead researcher Kim Cornish, from the Monash School of Psychological Sciences, said traditional methods such as IQ tests did not accurately capture the range of cognitive and behavioural problems associated with these disabilities.

Professor Cornish also said these testing methods did not isolate which areas needed improvement, or in fact which interventions have made the improvement.

The study conducted a randomised trial of 77 children with developmental disabilities. The intervention group with the tablet technology showed improved core cognitive attention skills that were maintained for up to three months after the training ceased, along with improved numeracy abilities.

According to Professor Cornish, while there are literally hundreds of apps available that claim to improve attention, intelligence and brainpower, none have been assessed clinically, so ascertaining the true effect that these interventions may have on childhood cognition is impossible.

“The majority of autism apps focus on social skills training which, while important, it is the ability to improve cognitive skills alongside behavioural skills that is of utmost importance,” she said.

Homecare Medical names tech partners for NZ telehealth service

Tele-triage operator Homecare Medical has named a number of technology partners it is working with to develop New Zealand’s new national telehealth service, after it was named as the preferred provider by Health Minister Jonathan Coleman this week.

Homecare Medical already provides a number of 24/7 triage services, including nurse triage, health advice, health provider information and community care co-ordination service Primary Options for Acute Care (POAC).

It will now take over the Healthline nurse triage and advice service from Medibank Health Solutions, Quitline, the Alcohol Drug Helpline service, immunisation and vaccination advice to the public in association with the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), depression advice and services as part of the National Depression Initiative, and the Gambling Helpline.

It will partner with the National Poisons Centre at the University of Otago to allow nurses to access the centre’s database, but the centre will continue to provide the Poisonline service to clinicians and the public.

Emergency 111 calls and PlunketLine will not be affected but Homecare Medical said it was working with Plunket to jointly manage calls to PlunketLine that are currently referred to Healthline.

It is also working with St John on extending advice for non-urgent, not life-threatening 111 calls for ambulances currently provided in Auckland by Homecare Medical nurses.

Homecare Medical was established in February 2014 when Canterbury-based PHO Pegasus Health formally partnered with Auckland PHO ProCare to expand on ProCare’s existing HML tele-triage service.

Currently the two networks serve more than 1.44 million enrolled patients and support around 300 practices employing over 1300 GPs and 1000 practice nurses.

The new national service, set to launch on November 1, will also include the technology partners Homecare Medical has been working with for some time as part of its technology roadmap.

These include:

Homecare Medical chairman Martin Seers said the company will work to deliver a service that can be accessed through multiple channels 24/7, including phone, websites, email, text message and chat, with video calling and mobile applications to come in the future.

“This will be a service where every door is the right door, where users’ needs are met directly, or by linking them to the appropriate service – their GP, nurse, pharmacist, a midwife, paramedics, a counsellor or therapist,” Dr Seers, a Christchurch GP, said.

“While the current health and wellness phone advice lines work well and we’re starting from a strong base, there is an opportunity for them to be more connected and to significantly enhance the services currently offered. We will integrate with them and collaborate with other service providers over time.”

The idea for a national telehealth service was first mooted back in 2011, with the government pushing for a comprehensive free service that would be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A tender was published through the government’s ‘competitive dialogue process’ in April 2014.

Dr Coleman said in a statement that the public can still contact services using current phone numbers.

“Behind the scenes, the new national service will be more seamless and ensure people access the right advice, at the right time, no matter where they live,” he said.

“The national telehealth service will also help encourage patients to use community-based services and to self-care. This will help reduce the pressure on after-hours primary care and hospital emergency departments.”

The service is expected to handle about two million calls a year.

International health IT week in review: June 21

Pulse+IT’s weekly weekend round-up of international health IT and eHealth news:

Four step app ‘endorsement’ process
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 19/06/2015

Healthcare apps will go through a four-stage recommendation process as part of NHS England’s plans to create an endorsement model for these tools.


Ireland plans five year e-health journey
Digital Health News ~ Lyn Whitfield ~ 18/06/2015

Ireland’s new chief information officer for health, Richard Corbridge, has issued a ‘Knowledge and Information Strategy’ that sets out the building blocks for a transformation of the country’s health services using e-health.


Patient engagement to suffer if proposed MU rule finalized
Health Data Management ~ Greg Slabodkin ~ 18/06/2015

A coalition of 50 advocacy groups has voiced dismay to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding a proposed reversal of key patient-engagement criteria for Stage 2 meaningful use during the 2015-2017 timeframe.


IT could save NHS £13.7bn a year: Kelsey
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 17/06/2015

The use of digital technology can create savings in the NHS in England of up to £13.7 billion a year by 2020, according to Tim Kelsey, national director for patents and information at NHS England.


Ontario to beef up laws to protect patient privacy
Canadian Healthcare Technology ~ CanHealth ~ 17/06/2015

Ontario’s government has announced a plan to improve privacy and accountability in the healthcare system with new measures to protect the personal health information of patients.


Full records access promised for 2018
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 17/06/2015

Patients will have real-time access to their full digital health record by 2018, under new plans unveiled by NHS England.


ED discharge app wins contest, goes live
Health Data Management ~ Greg Goth ~ 17/06/2015

There is no shortage of healthcare app hackathons and contests these days, but the William Osler Health System in Brampton, Ontario, wastes no time in getting its contest’s winning apps into the hands of patients and caregivers right away.


Dissatisfaction’ leading to EHR replacement trend
HealthcareITNews ~ Mike Miliard ~ 17/06/2015

More and more buyers of electronic health records are finding themselves having second thoughts and opting to replace their existing systems, according to a new report.


Games for Health joins with PCHA, HIMSS
HealthcareITNews ~ Mike Miliard ~ 16/06/2015

The Personal Connected Health Alliance and HIMSS are partnering with the Games for Health Project to help increase the role of personal health technology in care delivery, convening clinical leaders and innovators with gamers and game developers.


VA revamps VistA EHR with new user interface, functions
Health Data Management ~ Joseph Goedert ~ 16/06/2015

The Department of Veterans Affairs, eyeing improved population health management, is developing substantial new capabilities for its VistA electronic health records system with initial rollouts starting later this year and in 2016.


HIMSS response to MU rule mostly positive
Health Data Management ~ Greg Slabodkin ~ 16/06/2015

In a June 15 letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society voiced its strong support for a CMS proposed rule that would ease compliance with Stages 1 and 2 of the electronic health records meaningful use program.


E-Referrals service stabilised
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek & Rebecca McBeth ~ 16/06/2015

The new NHS e-Referrals service has been stabilised and was running well on Tuesday afternoon, NHS England’s director of strategic systems and technology has said.


What makes an EHR “open” or interoperable?
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association ~ Dean Sittig & Adam Wright ~ 15/06/2015

We have identified 5 use cases that comprise a useful definition of an “open or interoperable electronic health record (EHR).


EHRs need five ‘use cases’ to be interoperable
FierceEMR ~ Marla Durben Hirsch ~ 15/06/2015

Electronic health records should have five “use cases” in order to be considered “open” or interoperable, according to a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).


Mostashari startup draws $30M in second round
HealthcareITNews ~ Bernie Monegain ~ 15/06/2015

Aledade, the ACO company that former ONC chief Farzad Mostashari, MD, started a year ago after stepping down from the government post, just landed $30 million in a second round of funding.


Epic CEO to donate 99 percent of fortune
HealthcareITNews ~ Mike Miliard ~ 15/06/2015

Epic founder Judy Faulkner is one of the latest billionaires to sign on to The Giving Pledge, the initiative launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage entrepreneurs to donate more than half of their wealth to charity.


Users unable to access E-Referrals
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 15/06/2015

GPs and NHS trusts are unable to access the new NHS e-Referral service just hours after it was launched, due to “technical difficulties”.


Survey: 21% of California physician practices not ready for ICD-10
Health Data Management ~ Greg Slabodkin ~ 15/06/2015

With just over 100 days left before the October 1 ICD-10 deadline takes effect, more than half of physician practices (51 percent) in a recent readiness survey by the California Medical Association indicated they were only minimally prepared for the code switchover, while more than a fifth (21 percent) said they were not at all prepared


VA eyes new platform to improve interoperability of veteran health data
FierceEMR ~ Katie Dvorak ~ 15/06/2015

With an eye on solving issues for sharing veteran health data between government agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to launch a new interface–the Enterprise Health Management Platform (EHMP).


Royal Devon approves Epic business case
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 15/06/2015

Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust board has approved a business case to buy the Epic electronic patient record after putting the programme on hold to assess costs.


Budget, non-compliant employees top hospital IT leaders’ security concerns
FierceHealthIT ~ Susan D. Hall ~ 15/06/2015

While protecting healthcare data remains a huge priority for hospitals, respondents to a new survey say lack of budget and non-compliant employees are two of their biggest challenges to security.


Call to improve mHealth data protection
Digital Health News ~ Thomas Meek ~ 15/06/2015

Greater efforts must be made to protect patient data collected by mobile devices, according to Europe’s data guardian.


EHR/PHR vendor MIE gets hacked
Health Data Management ~ Joseph Goedert ~ 14/06/2015

Electronic health records vendor Medical Informatics Engineering and its personal health records vendor subsidiary NoMoreClipboard have been hit by a sophisticated cyber attack.


Ehealth progress still poor $2 billion and 14 years later
Canadian Medical Association Journal ~ Paul Christopher Webster ~ 10/06/2015

Duplication of efforts and a lack of interoperability have plagued attempts to have a pan-Canadian electronic health record system.