John Halamka
The Beth Israel Deaconess CIO looks back at the big events that shaped health IT in 2014 -- and ahead to what they portend for the coming year. "2014 was quite a year," he writes. "Thinking back to December 2013, I cannot believe that so much has happened."
Now that we have experience with two stages of meaningful use, it's also clear that a three year cycle is needed to ensure safe, high value, well adopted, introduction of new IT functionality.
After nearly 20 years as a CIO, I've learned that even with the best people, best planning and appropriate budgets, large, complex projects encounter issues imposed by external factors that cannot be predicted during initial project scheduling.
In the Boston marketplace, Partners Healthcare is is replacing 30 years of self developed software with Epic. Boston Medical Center is replacing Eclipsys (Allscripts) with Epic.
Last week my mother fell and broke her hip. She was taken to a very good local hospital and received excellent orthopedic care.
I'm often asked how healthcare reform will impact IT planning and implementation over the next few years.
As readers of my blog know, I'm passionate about mobile technology. I believe that iPhone/Android smartphones, iPod Touch, and the iPad, Playbook, Galaxy, and Streak will become the platforms for healthcare.
Last week, I met with Patientsafe Solutions, a San Diego-based startup founded by serial entrepreneur James Sweeney. Their idea is simple - leverage the iPod Touch 4G form factor and the iOS 4 SDK to create an all in one mobile device for healthcare.
The Vocabulary Task Force of the HIT Standards Committee is hard at work specifying the vocabularies and codesets that should be publicly available to accelerate certification and meaningful use efforts.
As we all implement Meaningful Use stages 1, 2, and 3 from 2011-2015, we will increasingly share data among payers, providers and patients. Protecting privacy is foundational and we should only exchange data per patient preference. How will we achieve that in Massachusetts?