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@ShahidNShah

Free advice for selecting EMRs and other medical software

All the talk around Meaningful Use, EMRs, EHRs, regional extension centers, and other buzzwords are utterly confusing the physician practices and staff who need to make decisions about what software to buy. I’ve put together some free resources over at HITSphere called Free Medical and Healthcare Software Buying advice. If you’re confused and would like to see some easy to use tools for how to decide what to look for and what to buy and could use some hand-holding you should check it out.

Shahid N. Shah

NHIN Direct & CONNECT 3.0 Update at Government Health IT Conference & Expo in Washington D.C

NHIN, the National Health Information Network, is something you’ll need to be familiar with if you’re doing any work in the healthcare IT industry. Next week at the Government Health IT Conference & Expo in Washington D.C you’ll be able to get technical overview of NHIN and related subprojects called NHIN CONNECT and NHIN Direct. You can use CONNECT right now to create your own health information exchange (HIE) or connect to an existing HIE.

Shahid N. Shah

Where Have We Come in a Year? Social Media and Its Impact on the Healthcare Industry

Last year I had the privilege of chairing and keynoting the Healthcare New Media Marketing Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I enjoyed the event because the attendees were practitioners from the provider space (many hospitals, health systems, etc). This year I was invited back to the 2nd Annual Conference, which is being held in Chicago next Monday and Tuesday, to talk on the topic of “Where Have We Come in a Year?

Shahid N. Shah

What VA’s winners of health IT innovation competition says about the industry and MU

About a week ago Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the selection of 26 winning ideas in the Veterans Health Administration / Office of Information and Technology (VHA/OIT) Innovation Competition. Here’s the list from the website: Reducing health care associated infections using informatics CPRS-based automated queries & reports Robust VA forms search engine Augment CPRS with standards-based decision support engine Enhanced care management to facilitate case management and chronic disease care Integration of behavioral health lab & CPRS for mental health primary care Edischarge pilot program Show patient picture in CPRS CPRS enhancement for veteran-centered care “Parking” outpatient prescriptions to prevent waste Suicide hotline: be a hero, save a hero Touch screen device support for nursing triage of patients Tools for front line veteran eligibility staffing VA-wide core collection of knowledge based information resources Integrate VistA surgery package with CPRS Illustrated medication instructions for veterans Share verified insurance info via use of the master patient index Veteran online tracking of mail prescription delivery Search function in CPRS Accessible contact information for all assigned care providers Online radiology protocoling tool integrated within CPRS/VistA Wireless voice communications with hands free options Improved access to military personnel records Brief resident supervision index Emergency medical response team communication Reduce unnecessary/duplicate lab tests by rules-based algorithms All of these ideas have merit and I think the VA’s been innovative about how they’ve gathered the ideas.

Shahid N. Shah

How to commercialize your healthcare IT and media products

The National Institutes of Health Commercialization Program (NIH-CAP), designed to assist promising life science companies bring their technologies to market, is a nation wide program funded by NIH. NIH invited me to talk to this year’s class of SBIR/STTR grantees about how to commercialize their Healthcare IT, Media, and Training products at the 12th Annual NIH SBIR/STTR Conference held in Raleigh, NC last week. I’ve done this event for about 4 years now and it’s very well put together and heavily attended by companies looking to launch healthcare products.

Shahid N. Shah

Will RECs accidentally wreck innovation in the EMR market on their way to helping small practices?

The Federal Government is granting hundreds of millions of dollars to Regional Extension Centers (called “RECs” and pronounced like “wrecks”) to help small physician practices benefit from healthcare information technology solutions. RECs are designed to offer consulting and technical support to help accelerate adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The purpose of the RECs is to provide guidance on which products to buy, help reduce prices of software through group purchase agreements, and give technical assistance on implementation and deployment.

Shahid N. Shah

Guest Article: Healthcare IT Lessons Learned at a Growing Practice

To share how a smaller healthcare practice grew its business through the use of technology, I’ve reached out to Therese Rodda, owner and executive director of Friendship Heights Rehabilitation Center and a physical therapist with more than twenty years experience. Therese has spent her entire career working within my home Washington, D.C. metropolitan area in hospital, outpatient and home care and was the former Community Health Professional of the Year nominee by the Maryland National Home Care Association.

Shahid N. Shah

Additional NIST Certification Draft Test Procedures updates

Check out the NIST Draft Test Procedures site; the following test documents have been updated this week: Incorporate laboratory test results Report quality measures Submission to immunization registries Public health surveillance They’re making good progress on the procedures but there is still quite a long way to go before the final ones are approved and made public. Has anyone been through the details? What do you guys think so far about the quality and objectivity of the test procedures?

Shahid N. Shah

NIST hosting a summer workshop on usability in health IT

NIST recently announced that they are hosting a workshop on July 13 in Gaithersburg, Maryland entitled Usability in Health IT: Strategic, Research, and Implementation. Here are the particulars from the announcement: Sponsors: <td width="71%" height="68" valign="top"> <a href="http://www.nist.gov/"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">National Institute of Standards and Technology</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> (NIST) and Technology<br /> Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT<br /> Agency for Healthcare Reseach and Quality </span> </td> Audience: <td width="71%" height="26" valign="top"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Health IT professionals.

Shahid N. Shah

Harvard Business Review wonders whether the U.S. health technology sector has run out of gas

Recently I wrote that Innovation in healthcare IT is dead (but hopefully only temporarily). I thought, after my HIMSS trip, that there was very little innovation happening probably because of the deep freeze caused by all the regulatory activity and new Meaningful Use and Certification requirements. Today I saw one of my favorite publications, Harvard Business Review, ask a more general question: Has the U.S. Health Technology Sector Run Out of Gas?

Shahid N. Shah
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