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How to identify spreadsheets and databases with protected health information (PII and PHI)

The nice folks from IBM’s developerWorks group asked me to write an intermediate-level set of instructions (with a little code) for how technical teams can identify and find databases and spreadsheets that might contain personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI). The article is now available on IBM’s developerWorks, here’s the abstract: Identity theft and medical fraud are growing problems. They are so big the U.S. government is spending billions of dollars securing its own computer systems and has written thousands of pages of new regulations that you must follow to help protect your customer and employee data.

Shahid N. Shah

Social Networking Guidelines for Physicians, Office Staff and Patients

Ohio State Medical Association (OSMA) Legal Services Group has released their Social Media Toolkit for Physicians, Office Staff and Patients to “help physicians navigate through the world of online communication”. I’ve taken a quick look and it’s a terrific document with a good discussion of whether or not physicians should “friend” their patients. It covers many other aspects of medical practice social networking risks and benefits and is worth checking out.

Shahid N. Shah

The Keys To Building Health Care IT Companies

My friend Matt Ethington sent me a note about Forbes.com’s recent article on The Keys To Building Health Care IT Companies. The article nicely covers what they think are “the most important things to consider when creating a health IT firm.” As an advisor to many health IT firms I often repeat the same things mentioned in the article (verbatim from Forbes.com): The product must be a true “have-to-have,” not a “nice-to-have”.

Shahid N. Shah

Guest Article: How to decide which hospital systems to prioritize when planning for disaster recovery

I recently saw BridgeHead Software’s white paper on Healthcare Disaster Recovery and found it quite useful. I invited Charles Mallio, Jr., who is currently Vice President of Business Development for BridgeHead, to give us a summary of their thinking around DR in healthcare. Prior to joining BridgeHead, Charles worked for 12 years at MEDITECH, the last six of which he was responsible for worldwide customer technical support for all MEDITECH platforms.

Shahid N. Shah

Give your opinion on whether you think RECs will deliver on their mission

Earlier this week the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced the selection of the final two regional extension centers (RECs). The two RECs provide coverage for Orange County California and the state of New Hampshire. This brings the total count up to 62 and completes the national network of RECs. RECs are taksed with the mission of helping 100,000 primary care providers becoming “meaningful users” (MU) of EHRs in less than 24 months.

Shahid N. Shah

Guest Article: How desktop virtualization helps healthcare IT initiatives

I’ve been getting many questions about whether hospitals and physician offices should be considering desktop virtualization (there’s a fear that virtualization is not secure or may not work). To help answer the question, I invited Ryan Pope, a Product Manager at 2X Software which develops enterprise server-based virtual computing software, to tell us a bit about virtualization in healthcare. 2X software enables desktop virtualization and application streaming on personal computers and thin client devices and these guys know their stuff.

Shahid N. Shah

Boosting the productivity of clinical workers

McKinsey Quarterly recently published “Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers” (free registration required to access the link). While the article is not specific to clinical or IT workers, they wrote that “the key is identifying and addressing the barriers workers face in their daily interactions” which couldn’t be more true in a clinical setting. The article starts by asking “Are you doing all that you can to enhance the productivity of your knowledge workers?

Shahid N. Shah

How To Pick IT Consultants for Various Technical Tasks

The editors at The Journal of Surgical Radiology recently asked me to write a column on what I thought would be an important IT topic. Given the number of healthcare providers I’ve consulted with and counsel on a regular basis one of the most common questions I get is “how do I know which consultants I need?” With all the new work surrounding meaningful use and certification, this is an even more timely question so I wrote a column for them on “How To Obtain Quality IT Help“.

Shahid N. Shah
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