Blog
In an editorial I wrote this week for Health Affairs (to be published in the March IT issue), I emphasized the need for Regional Health IT Extension Centers - local support organizations that help doctors install electronic health records and use them to achieve improved quality, efficiency, and continuity of care.
We propose that our nation's responsibility to transform healthcare must involve much more than a massive investment in computerizing patients' medical records.
Today’s economic crisis has highlighted our need for breakthrough improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of health care. The nation’s business competitiveness is threatened by growing health care costs, while at the same time our citizens risk losing access to care because of unemployment and the decreasing affordability of coverage.
Annually I work with Ministry’s IT Customer Advisory Board (our IT Steering committee) to identify the IT projects for the coming year.
Clinical Groupware is a departure from the client-server and physician-centric EHR technology of the past 25 years, a fixed database technology that never really became popular.
When I read a headline like "Privacy advocates hail stimulus bills," I immediately wonder which privacy advocates.
Last week, I wrote about the effort to proactively protect BIDMC and Harvard from the Conficker virus. Our efforts continue with the following...
I finally got on Facebook, despite my teenage daughters' fear that I would 'creep on them' and interrupt their respective networks. Shortly thereafter, I began to post on Twitter. These two experiences have caused me to reflect on the power that these tools bring to communication and how they could fit into the connected health landscape.
Transparency, in the form of a complete, patient-centered and accessible health record is a policy principle that can drive the next wave of health care innovation. Investing exclusively in institutional EHRs will further stifle efficiency, innovation and improvement.
I woke up at 2:30 a.m. eastern this morning with a single thought
-- what the American health system needs is an X Prize. Had it not been so cold (it's hard to keep a Maine country house warm when it's 20 below zero), I might have written my blog immediately. I'm glad I didn't.
