Medigy Logo The Healthcare IT Guy
Person name
Managing Editor
@ShahidNShah

Opinion

A collection of 439  Posts

HL7 library for Ruby Released

Mark Guzman over at Tech Addict just announced the 0.1.23 release of an HL7 parser for Ruby. I’ve been doing a bunch of Rails stuff lately and this should come in handy when I need HL7 parsing. I haven’t tried it out yet, but here’s what Mark said is in there: Flexible parsing support MLLP support Provides a simple DSL (domain specific language) for defining segments (Ruby style) Allows for arbitrary manipulation of segment data Automatic segment ordering (via sort) Familiar Ruby Array/Enumerable semantics How to get it:

Shahid N. Shah

A free Ad-based EMR

I wanted to call your attention to Dr. Scott Shreve’s posting about Practice Fusion and ad-driven revenue. Having built out half dozen EMRs in my career, it’s good to see a company like Practice Fusion giving adware a try — I don’t think they have anything to lose. I hope they can succeed where other EMRs have failed (or at least not done so well). The technology behind EMRs is embarrassingly easy to create nowadays — most EMRs are just simple databases that act like electronic typewriters and simple filing cabinets.

Shahid N. Shah

Helping Health IT firms commercialize their offerings

I have been working closely with Larta www.larta.org and the NIH funded Healthcare IT companies they are assisting with commercialization. These companies have some very interesting technologies and with the right guidance and help, have tremendous market potential. Larta will be conducting a workshop in Washington DC and on March 29 and 30, 2007, these NIH funded Healthcare IT startups will pitch their technologies to an audience of mentors and advisors comprising of investors, industry personnel and consultants.

Shahid N. Shah

Open Source data mapping and transformation tool from NIH

My friend Jeremy Hulick recently wrote to me about NIH’s caAdaptor tool, an open source product he learned about at the recent CaBIG conference. Here’s how the authors describe it: caAdapter is an open source tool set that facilitates data mapping and transformation among different kinds of data sources including HL7 v2 and v3 messages, Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) data sets, object models and data models. For HL7 v3 messages, it possesses the capability to perform vocabulary validation by integrating with NCICB caCORE components and provides web service access for easy application integration.

Shahid N. Shah

How much do you know about healthcare in America?

One of the most common presentations and lectures I do at companies is an “Introduction to Healthcare IT” (Health IT 101). Some of the items I try to cover include how the healthcare industry in the USA operates because inevitably our IT systems are limited in functionality because of our business structure. Nainil Chheda, who posted a guest article on NHIN last month, sent me his “Introduction to Healthcare in the USA” presentation that he’s written for some briefings he’ll be doing outside the USA.

Shahid N. Shah

Excellent tips, tricks, and advice for those going to the HIMSS Conference

Tim Gee does some wonderful posts on medical devices and interoperability. Like any good blogger, he’s a good writer and he really knows his subject matter. Recently, he wrote a series of articles on how to get the most out of your trip to the Annual HIMSS pilgrimage. If you’re going and want to get some tips, tricks, and advice, check out: Getting the Most from HIMSS – Providers HIMSS Tips for Vendors – Competitive Intelligence HIMSS Tips for Vendors – Closing Sales Getting the Most From HIMSS By the way, if you’re a vendor who’s exhibited in the past but is not exhibiting this year, can you drop us some comments about why you might not be attending this year?

Shahid N. Shah

Tolven Healthcare Innovations has ready to run open source healthcare apps

Check out Tolven Healthcare Innovations — they’ve got this open source software (language from their website): An electronic Personal Health Record solution (ePHR) that will enable consumers to record and selectively share healthcare information about themselves and their loved ones in a secure manner. An electronic Clinician Health Record solution (eCHR) that enables physicians and other healthcare providers to securely access healthcare information collated from any number of trusted sources relating to an individual patient in a structured and easily accessible way.

Shahid N. Shah

HIMSS Blogger Meetup Date, Time, and Location Established

After a number of e-mails and suggestions we’ve got general consensus on date, time, and venue for the meetup: Date: Sunday, February 25, 2007 Time: 08:00 PM (right after the HIMSS Reception) Location: Mulate’s (Cajun restaurant and bar located right across from the convention center) — thanks to Tim Gee for the arrangements Here’s who’s signed up so far Click here to register

Shahid N. Shah

Health Wonk Review #25

Health Wonk Review #25 is up at David Harlow’s Health Care Law Blog. It’s a fun review of some of this week’s best healthcare blogging.

Shahid N. Shah

Daylight Savings Time change this year may cause healthcare transaction hiccups

This article was initially posted at HISTalk. However, the issue is important and I’ve received good feedback on the readiness of medical devices from Tim Gee of Medical Connectivity and I wanted to share his thoughts here as well. As we all probably know by now, this year Daylight Savings Time (DST) starts on March 11 instead of in April. Daylight-saving time has usually started on first Sunday of April and reverted to standard time on the last Sunday in October.

Shahid N. Shah
Prev Posts
Next Posts

Medigy Innovation Network

Connecting innovation decision makers to authoritative information, institutions, people and insights.

Medigy Logo

The latest News, Insights & Events

Medigy accurately delivers healthcare and technology information, news and insight from around the world.

The best products, services & solutions

Medigy surfaces the world's best crowdsourced health tech offerings with social interactions and peer reviews.

© 2025 Netspective Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Built on Mar 12, 2025 at 5:07am