Effective forms management improves healthcare data quality 23 Aug 2017 6:33 AM (8 years ago)
When was the last time you thought about the forms strategy in your organization? Most of us think about forms as a clerical activity but proper management of patient forms drives important clinical and business initiatives such as patient satisfaction, patient quality scores, and care coordination analytics. The demand for clinical data and research performed by Healthcare Data Analytics is growing exponentially. With so much emphasis in healthcare put on collecting quality data, information exchange, analytics, patient generated health data, and more, it’s surprising how little attention is put on the way this important information is collected.
Is “cloud security” an oxymoron? Join us at CDW’s #HIMSS17 booth on Monday at 3pm to find out. 16 Feb 2017 5:53 AM (8 years ago)
Institutions in all industry sectors have made significant IT moves into the cloud (which basically means they’ve outsourced their data centers and server infrastructure). Most companies that have transformed their IT departments to be cloud first are gaining efficiencies and productivity improvements in all areas of IT. Other than being surprised by costs being higher in some cases than they expected, very few IT professionals dislike anything about the cloud enough to go back from cloud to on-premise.
#IBMWoW cognitive solutions for cyber threat analysis and collaboration 20 Oct 2016 4:11 PM (9 years ago)
I’ll be attending IBM’s World of Watson 2016 in Las Vegas next week. I’m looking forward to hearing whether government and industry are collaborating any better as a result of the passage of The Cybersecurity Act of 2015. The Cyber Act by itself doesn’t really imply (or require) that citizen data (or any other kind of private data) be made accessible across institutions. However, what it does encourage is the sharing of threat or breach data.
Cognitive ushers us from “carbon intelligence” to AI “silicon intelligence” 20 Oct 2016 10:01 AM (9 years ago)
When the term “artificial intelligence” – better known as “AI” – was initially coined, it was thought that humans (carbon based life forms) had “real” intelligence while the best a machine’s intelligence (to the extent they had any) could get was “artificial”. As I work with companies that are leading major machine learning, algorithms, and AI initiatives I’m convinced that we’re ushering in a new golden age of AI but one that might need some terminology refinements.
Digitally managed clinical trials will accelerate results and reduce costs 28 Sep 2016 3:14 AM (9 years ago)
Digitally managed clinical trials have the potential to accelerate results report and reduce costs but workflow questions and regulatory questions remain. In many facets of our lives digital data collection has improved services, eliminated errors, and reduced waste in time and resources. Think about the ticketing and check-in process at airports ten years ago vs. today: when airlines put the information in our hands we were able to do the check-in, seat selection, and other work for them.
Health IoT creates huge opportunities for public health and software companies 28 Jan 2016 5:15 PM (9 years ago)
_It was evident from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month that there’s a great deal of interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) in general and for Health IoT in particular. Given that interest I thought I would reach out to a couple of experts to help explore the IoT landscape. Murali Kurukunda is Director of IT and Lead Architect at Medecision and Dr. _Peter L. Levin, is CEO at Amida, director of ConversaHealth, and a father of the BlueButton initiative (which he helped launch as CTO of VA)__.
Could Apple Store-like digital health retail stores be popular? 5 Nov 2015 6:10 AM (9 years ago)
As I travel the country speaking at conferences, I’ve had dozens of conversations with smart people who believe there’s a growing consensus that “patient-driven” (or consumer-driven or member-driven) healthcare spending has arrived. Consumer-driven insurance exchanges, high deductible insurance plans and copays are creating more patient payment responsibilities than ever before. So, if patient-driven healthcare spending has arrived does that mean we’re ready for digital health or healthcare insurance retail stores?
Reimbursements red herring, trust, and key infrastructure needs for Telemedicine success 28 Oct 2015 7:22 PM (9 years ago)
Telemedicine is a growing part of modern healthcare, and could play a pivotal role in the U.S.’s efforts to streamline and expand preventative services. Virtual, video-based doctor’s appointments can help alleviate the general practitioner shortage, and encourage preventative care. They also offer a cheaper, more-convenient alternative to in-person appointments for many patients. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hype and misinformation being reported so I was pleased to see that TechnologyAdvice (TA) surveyed 504 U.
Impacts we can expect from ICD-10 transition 28 Oct 2015 6:47 PM (9 years ago)
The nice folks at Ingenious Med reached out to get my opinion on the recent ICD-10 transition. They summarized my thoughts in a recent post on their blog. Their questions reminded me of similar ones I’ve been recently asked so I thought I’d elaborate them here. Q: How will the additional specificity required by ICD-10 pose a challenge for clinicians and the way that they currently track patient information? A: For clinicians with “simple” requirements – such as specialists or those that don’t perform too many different diagnoses or procedures the transition will be annoying but not catastrophic.
How health IT enables safer medical travel and tourism 7 Jun 2015 9:33 AM (10 years ago)
IT innovation, global medicine and frustrated medical patients drive the demand for medical travel. But telemedicine also improves patient care and the customer experience of medical travelers. Once again, we welcome medical IT entrepreneur, Agha Ahmed, Managing Partner of GHIMBA, as we explore how IT innovations help patients get high-quality healthcare outside of the USA. How do IT innovations help provide services that medical travelers can benefit from? IT helps deliver safe medical care and a pleasant trip to facilities overseas.
HealthIMPACT Southwest recap: CIOs think dashboards need significant improvement 26 May 2015 3:26 AM (10 years ago)
I chair the HealthIMPACT series of events that is held in a variety of cities throughout the year. HealthIMPACT is a no-nonsense and “No BS” local one-day event for busy health IT professionals that pretty much know what they’re doing but are looking to learn from their peers (instead of professional presenters). We don’t try to add further hype to common trends everyone’s already seen many times or explain the obvious to make ourselves look smart; we explain the implications of trends to your daily work, figure out how to operationalize innovations, and provide actionable advice so that you can do your job better.
How health IT can deliver on the promise of Medical Travel 18 May 2015 10:49 AM (10 years ago)
Health IT for large systems, hospitals, and traditional physician practices is well underway. Enough so that innovators/startups, are starting to see consolidation and heavy competition. As I look around at new areas for health IT implementations, I think areas in medical travel or medical tourism (“MT”) appear to be great opportunities. A potent mix of the Internet, cloud computing and globalized medicine — when combined — should drive medical travel. I’ll be speaking at the Medical Travel and Global Healthcare Business Summit in Tampa Florida.
Shahid’s No BS guide to patient engagement at #HIMSS15 12 Apr 2015 5:46 AM (10 years ago)
I’ll be at #HIMSS15 in Chicago this week and am preparing for the onslaught of the term “patient engagement”. It’s both overused and ill-defined which means it’s almost meaningless as a category of technology or approaches. It’s also multi-faceted which means a definition is not going to be forthcoming soon; so, I’m not going to try. As I go through the educational sessions and exhibits looking at patient engagement solutions, I’m going to be trying to figure out how to categorize them.
Evaluating and choosing healthcare cloud services providers 31 Mar 2015 4:02 AM (10 years ago)
As healthcare moves from on-premise to cloud services, the evaluation and selection of “HIPAA compliant” cloud service providers becomes an import task. I don’t like the description “HIPAA compliant” because it’s imprecise and not meaningful. However, it’s something that many non-technical people look for when evaluating providers so I’m using it here. My friend Alex Ginzburg, VP of Technology at Intervention Insights, and I have done this kind of healthcare cloud services providers evaluation and selection many times so it was natural for me to reach out and ask him to provide some guidance for the community.
Congress finally getting serious about telemedicine, but are CDOs ready? 20 Mar 2015 10:21 AM (10 years ago)
The latest ‘doc fix’ bill, H.R. 1470, was introduced last week. Though it has quite a ways to go before it’s sent to conference or passed, the bill has some pretty nice language for telemedicine and care coordination enthusiasts. Though it’s probably less than I would like, Section 4 (Encouraging Care Management for Individuals with Chronic Care Needs) is a great start. The telehealth language is pretty general but I like how it is making sure that telemedicine isn’t precluded from being reimbursed.
Social selling of Medical Devices is hard but necessary 12 Mar 2015 4:08 PM (10 years ago)
Social selling of Medical Devices is something we don’t talk enough about because it’s hard. That’s going to change soon. You’re probably aware that John Lynn and I are co-chairing the exciting 2nd iteration of the Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (“HITMC”) in May. What you’re probably not aware of is that we’re expanding the audience and sessions to include non-traditional healthcare IT participants — specifically medical device manufacturers. I believe that the distinction of health IT or digital health marketing vs.
Entrepreneurs must integrate mission-driven strategic investors 8 Mar 2015 9:19 AM (10 years ago)
Last week I wrote about how federated groups of investors help de-risk innovations in the Venture Development Lifecycle (VDLC). Yesterday I elaborated on how entrepreneurs can understand risk through various funding cycles. One of the most important investors we didn’t talk about in the VDLC was the strategic investor (what I like to call the mission-driven investor) . Mission-driven strategics view risk differently and entrepreneurs should create investor journey maps to take them into account.
Patients say deploying a patient portal isn’t enough to engage them 4 Mar 2015 3:30 AM (10 years ago)
Much has been made of the push to better engage patients, but little has been spent on examining exactly what patients want. Despite the requirements set by the EHR Incentive Program, simply deploying a patient portal isn’t enough to engender real, sustainable engagement. Recently TechnologyAdvice surveyed 409 adult Americans about their digital health services preferences. I really like the surveys they run so I reached out to Zach Watson, the healthcare IT content manager at TechnologyAdvice, to see what health providers, entrepreneurs, and innovators could learn from the results.
Digital health startups should de-risk using strategically integrated investors 3 Mar 2015 5:25 AM (10 years ago)
I have the pleasure of meeting or speaking with many digital health, health IT, medTech, and life sciences (especially genomics and bioinformatics) startups every week. As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor myself I know how hard it is these days to get to product/market fit while working with top-notch investors who understand how to help scale a business. Last week I wrote about how strategically integrated investors help de-risk innovations and I got some great questions via e-mail about how cofounders and startups should go about seeking such investors.
Is digital health innovation overrated? 17 Feb 2015 4:48 AM (10 years ago)
Our next HealthIMPACT CIO Summit will take place next Friday, February 27th, 2015**,** at the Union League Club in New York. Our conversation kicks off in the morning with Ed Marx, SVP & CIO at Texas Health Resources and 2014 IW Healthcare CIO of the Year, and Michael Restuccia, VP & CIO at University of Pennsylvania Health System. I will be interviewing Ed and Michael together on stage and we’ll focus on how to establish a process that will embed successful innovation into the culture of an organization.
7 digital health innovations and investments for 2015 17 Feb 2015 3:27 AM (10 years ago)
The folks from HP Matter digital magazine wanted to know where I thought digital health startups, product innovators, and venture capital investors should be pointing their attention in 2015. These are some of my technology and healthcare predictions: CMS’s request for information (RFI) on new primary care models bears innovative fruit. Interoperability will move beyond talk and into sustainable business models and real technology. The healthcare ecosystem should be able to create lasting patient benefits.
Who should be held accountable for risk management and cybersecurity in healthcare institutions? 22 Jan 2015 9:47 AM (10 years ago)
_I’ve been involved in building many life-critical and mission-critical products over the last 25 years and have found that, finally, cybersecurity is getting the kind of attention it deserves. We’re slowly and steadily moving from “HIPAA Compliance” silliness into a more mature and disciplined professional focus on risk management, continuous risk monitoring, and actual security tasks concentrating on real technical vulnerabilities and proper training of users (instead of just “security theater”).
Second annual Healthcare IT Marketing Conference (HITMC) 14 Dec 2014 11:34 PM (10 years ago)
John Lynn, prolific blogger and health IT media magnate, and I are teaming up again for the second year to produce and deliver a marketing conference focused on helping digital health, health IT, and medical device innovators. We’re going to be providing actionable advice and specific techniques you can use to cut through the noise when trying to market healthcare and medical tech products to physicians, hospitals, health systems, ACOs, patients, and similar customers.
Is Meaningful Use working and what can innovators do to help with EHR adoption? 8 Nov 2014 11:38 PM (10 years ago)
Earlier this year NueMD created a nice looking Meaningful Use Infographic — asking the question whether MU was helping or hurting EHR Adoption. I loved the summary but I wanted to dig in a little further so I asked Dr. William Rusnak, a resident physician in radiology and a healthcare IT writer for NueMD, to tell us what that infographic meant for innovators and folks building solutions. Here’s what Dr. Rusnak said:
Health IT and digital health job opportunities, qualifications, and certification benefits 25 Oct 2014 11:44 PM (10 years ago)
I’ve written a number of articles and a few video interviews on job opportunities in digital health recently and have received a steady stream of questions since then. Given healthcare IT professionals can make $90,000 or more annually, there has been growing interest in the industry. To help separate fact from fiction and dive a little deeper in to the realities of these opportunities, I reached out to Beth Kelly, a freelance writer from Chicago, IL to summarize the projected outlook for specialized positions within the field of health IT.
Health-focused wearables have a chance of improving patient care if innovators craft solutions plus providers and insurers work together to incentivize and pay for them 19 Oct 2014 11:45 PM (11 years ago)
I’ve been interested in the new “wearables” segment for a while. I reached out to Cameron Graham, the managing editor at TechnologyAdvice where he oversees market research for emerging technology, to give us some evidence-driven advice about wearables that entrepreneurs, innovators, healthcare providers, and payers can use for decision making. Specifically, what does the current research show and what are the actionable insights for how to incentivize patients to use them and figure out why patients might pay for them?
Top 9 Insights for patient-centric Digital Health Innovators from the ENGAGE conference 12 Oct 2014 11:48 PM (11 years ago)
MedCityNews invited me to attend their ENGAGE “Innovation in Patient Engagement” Conference and I found the content, speakers, and overall quality quite good. Since I chair several conferences every year I know how hard it is to pull off a good one so I’d like to congratulate MedCityNews for pulling off a great event. The goal of the ENGAGE was to highlight the importance of patient awareness and engagement in developing and managing novel digital health innovations.
The difference between User Stories and Software Requirements Specifications (SRS), especially for regulated systems (part 1) 9 Oct 2014 11:52 PM (11 years ago)
It’s getting easier and easier to build unregulated software these days but it’s still pretty hard to create regulated/certified systems such as EHRs, medical device software, and government IT. To help create better systems we all know we need better user requirements; however, “heavyweight requirements” efforts have been shunned, especially in unregulated systems, over the past decade in favor of “user stories” and more agile specifications. But, are agile user stories the best way to go in regulated systems where requirements traceability and safety analysis is a must?
When you’re looking to buy or replace your EHR, follow these common sense Dos and Don’ts for comparing EHR software 30 Sep 2014 11:58 PM (11 years ago)
By some accounts, almost 30% of EHR users will be interested in replacing their software as they move from Meaningful Use Stage 1 to 2 to 3 over the next few years. Although I’ve written and spoken extensively in the past about how to make sure you pick the right digital health and EHR software, I wanted to put together a new “common sense” type of Do’s and Don’ts list for picking new EHR software.
Patient portals have a future as a patient engagement tool if clinicians are on board and encourage their use 30 Sep 2014 12:04 AM (11 years ago)
I wrote my first patient portal site, built into my first EMR software, back in 1998. At that time I mistakenly thought that portals would take off and patients would embrace them. What I quickly learned was that patient portals aren’t really portals in the sense of Yahoo! or Google but enterprise software’s customer-facing front-ends. The enterprise software in this case is of course an EHR and the customers are the patients.
How to improve your SRS by distinguishing between vague and ambiguous requirements in health IT and medical device systems 28 Sep 2014 12:05 AM (11 years ago)
Because it’s so easy to build software these days we’re seeing a proliferation of healthcare apps — what’s hard to figure out is whether we’re building the right software. Abder-Rahman Ali, currently pursuing his Medical Image Analysis Ph.D. in France, has graciously agreed to give us advice on how to write good software specifications for health and medical technology solutions. Some of you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking that software requirements specifications (SRS) are old and “tired” and we should be writing agile user stories instead.
ENGAGE can help pharma and biotech learn how to benefit from patient engagement 26 Sep 2014 12:07 AM (11 years ago)
Patient engagement is something that physicians have done for thousands of years as they cared for patients (whether going to their homes or having them come to hospitals or clinics). With new digital health technologies the way providers can engage with patients is changing significantly but we’re not quite sure about the best ways to apply that technology. This is why I’m looking forward to attending MedCityNews.com’s ENGAGE conference next week in Washington, DC.
The future of medicine and the incredible innovations we can expect by 2064 25 Sep 2014 12:09 AM (11 years ago)
The Fred Alger Management team reached out to me recently asking what innovative changes I thought the medical and healthcare industry will be going through over the next 50 years. It was for their innovative “Think Further” series: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOgt85cPU8Q&list=UUcpr1hudOhiPOsj-7rwe8Ew&w=520] As Yogi Berra famously quipped “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” but Alger’s “Future of Medicine” question is an interesting approach to generating ideas so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Top Ten Insights for Digital Health Innovators from the Next Generation Point of Care Diagnostics Conference 1 Sep 2014 12:10 AM (11 years ago)
Cambridge HealthTech Institute (CHI) invited me to attend their Next Generation Point of Care Diagnostics Conference and I came away thoroughly impressed with the content, speakers, and organization. Since I chair several conferences a year I know how hard it is to pull off a good one so I’d like to thank CHI for a job well done. Goals & Attendees The goal of the event was to provide a progress update to the healthcare industry on the advances in next generation point-of-care (POC) diagnostics while highlighting the advent of innovative platforms and use of digital information systems to aid in the development of novel POC diagnostics.
Encryption at rest and encryption in transit for HIPAA compliance are not easy questions to answer 29 Aug 2014 12:24 AM (11 years ago)
Given the number of breaches we’ve seen this Summer at healthcare institutions, I’ve just spent a ton of time recently on several engineering engagements looking at “HIPAA compliant” encryption (HIPAA compliance is in quotes since it’s generally meaningless). Since I’ve heard a number of developers say “we’re HIPAA compliant because we encrypt our data” I wanted to take a moment to unbundle that statement and make sure we all understand what that means.
How to tackle vague requirements in health IT and medical device software using fuzzy logic and storytelling 21 Aug 2014 12:25 AM (11 years ago)
These days it’s pretty easy to build almost any kind of software you can imagine — what’s really hard, though, is figuring out what to build. As I work on complex software systems in government, medical devices, healthcare IT, and biomedical IT I find that tackling vague requirements is one of the most pervasive and difficult problems to solve. Even the most experienced developers have a hard time building something that has not been defined well for them; a disciplined software requirements engineering approach is necessary, especially in safety critical systems.
Learn how to operationalize new health IT wisdom at HealthIMPACT Midwest in Chicago on September 8 20 Aug 2014 12:26 AM (11 years ago)
Our vision of providing a series of packed one day events focused on practical, relevant, and actionable health IT advice were very well received in Houston, NYC, and Santa Monica earlier this year. Our next event is in Chicago and we’re going to continue to eschew canned PowerPoint decks which limit conversations and instead deliver on the implications of major trends and operationalizable advice about where to successfully apply IT in healthcare settings.
To improve patient satisfaction, hospital supply chain units need better IT and next generation technology 17 Aug 2014 12:27 AM (11 years ago)
I’ve been looking at hospital supply chain automation and the IT surrounding it for a number of years now. Starting with Cardinal Health but then moving on to help a number of other vendors in the space, I’ve felt that there’s not been enough next-generation tech being applied to the low margin, high volume business of hospital supply management. Hospitals often spend tens of millions of dollars on EHRs and other IT systems that have little direct cost reduction capability but they ignore, often at their peril, supply management systems that can save immediate dollars.
Guest Article: OLAP remains a great healthcare analytics architecture, even in the Big Data era 14 Aug 2014 12:29 AM (11 years ago)
I’ve been getting many questions these days about big data tools and solutions, especially their role in healthcare analytics. I think that unless you’re doing large scale analysis of biomedical data such as genomics, it’s probably best to stick with traditional tried and true analytics tools. Online Analytics Processing (OLAP) can be invaluable for medical facilities to use when interpreting data and health informatics because most of that data is in relational, key-value, or hiearchical databases (such as MUMPS).
What EHR/PM vendors should do as 63% of buyers look to replace existing PM solutions 23 Jul 2014 2:29 AM (11 years ago)
Melissa McCormack, a medical researcher with EHR consultancy group Software Advice, recently published their medical practice management BuyerView research, which found that 63% of the buyers were replacing existing PM solutions, rather than making a first-time purchase. This mirrors the trend we’ve seen across medical software purchasing, where the HITECH Act may have prompted hasty first purchases of EHR solutions, followed by replacements 1-2 years later. For PM vendors, this means there’s a huge opportunity to market your products to practices as an upgrade, even if they’re already using PM software.
Guest Article: HL7 FAQ and why exchanging critical patient data isn’t a nightmare 6 Jul 2014 12:44 PM (11 years ago)
I recently saw a demo of the Decisions.com platform and left impressed with the workflow engine, business rules execution, forms automation, and data integration platform. I’m very familiar with almost all the major HL7 routers and integration engines out there but Carl Hewitt, Founder and Chief Architect at Decisions, is releasing something fairly unique — an visual HL7 interface definition and integration platform for use by analysts and non-technical personnel charged with healthcare data connectivity across business workflows.
Guest Article: What EHR buyers and health IT vendors can learn from the Nashville market 6 Jul 2014 12:11 PM (11 years ago)
Zach Watson over at Technology Advice.com wrote a nice piece on EHR Trends in Nashville. I’m not a big fan of “trends” articles because trends aren’t that important, the implications of those trends and how to operationalize the implications are most important. I enjoyed Zach’s article so I asked him to tell us what those trends mean for EHR buyers and health IT vendors writ large. Here’s what Zach said:
Guest Article: Is Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) trustworthy enough to use in health record banks? 18 May 2014 6:07 AM (11 years ago)
The push towards shifting the patient’s role from a passive recipient of care to an active member of the care-team looks set to gain further legislative backing. Earlier this year, the Health IT Standards Committee, along with The Joint Commission and ONC, laid out recommendations for integrating patient generated health data (PGHD) into Stage 3 Meaningful Use requirements. To see what this might mean to health IT and med tech vendors, I reached out to Zach Watson of TechnologyAdvice, who covers EHR related news, along with business intelligence, and other topics.
There’s no difference between mHealth & telemedicine, come to ATA May 17-20 in Baltimore to learn more 8 May 2014 12:51 PM (11 years ago)
I’ll be heading to the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) annual conference in Baltimore in a couple of weeks. To see what I might learn there I interviewed Jon Linkous, CEO of ATA. The first question I asked him was “what’s the difference between mHealth and telemedicine?” Basically nothing, he said — but, he noted that the mobile health or mHealth movement and nomenclature has been very useful to the telemedical industry and he welcomed the comparisons.
Consolidation and other insights from the 2014 Meaningful Use EHR Market Share Report 4 May 2014 4:29 PM (11 years ago)
EHR review site Software Advice recently published their 2014 Meaningful Use EHR Market Share Report (a SlideShare version is also available). They reported that in contrast to the buzz about this impending market consolidation, they found a trend toward fragmentation; in fact, the number of vendors in the health space with MU attestations actually grew 25% in the past year alone. The report was nice enough that I reached out to Melissa McCormack from Software Advice to see what further insights we could glean from the report.
More practical, relevant, and actionable health IT advice to be doled out at HealthIMPACT East in NYC on Wednesday 27 Apr 2014 10:12 AM (11 years ago)
Our vision of providing a packed one day event focused on practical, relevant, and actionable health IT advice was very well received in Houston earlier this month. We wanted to focus not on canned PowerPoint decks and promotion of tech hype but specific advice on how and where to apply IT in healthcare settings. Based on some of the feedback we got, it looks like we struck a chord: “I did enjoy the HealthIMPACT Forum in Houston and will definitely recommend attending.
Guest Article: Secure message exchange using the Direct Protocol is not a myth, there really are people using it 14 Apr 2014 1:44 PM (11 years ago)
I recently chaired a couple of conferences and my next HealthIMPACT event is coming up later this month in NYC. At each one of the events and many times a year via twitter and e-mail I am asked whether the Direct Project is successful, worth implementing in health IT projects, and if there are many people sending secure messages using Direct. To help answer these questions, I reached out to Rachel A.
Anecdote-driven systems engineering and complaint-based interoperability design will not solve health IT woes 27 Mar 2014 9:52 AM (11 years ago)
As I’ve been preparing to chair the HealthIMPACT conference in Houston next Thursday I’ve been having some terrific conversations with big companies like Cisco, some of our publishing partners, and smaller vendors entering the health IT space for the first time. One great question I was asked during a discussing yesterday by a tech publisher was “so what’s it going to take to achieve real interoperability in healthcare and how long will it take?
What does it take to get beyond hype in health IT and focus on valuable, actionable, practical, relevant content? 20 Mar 2014 10:17 AM (11 years ago)
My friend John Lynn was kind enough to cover the new HealthIMPACT Conference that I’m chairing in Houston on April 3 in his recent piece entitled “Getting Beyond the Health IT Cheerleaders, BS, and Hype Machine“. While the article was great, Beth Friedman’s comment was priceless: What are the criteria to be considered part of the cheerleader squad? This PR agency wants to be sure we are providing valuable, actionable, [practical], relevant content….
Help us make sure HealthIMPACT events are useful and actionable 7 Mar 2014 12:00 PM (11 years ago)
This year I’m chairing a healthcare IT event series called HealthIMPACT — it’s what I’m hoping will be some of the best places for healthcare technology enthusiasts and buyers to get actionable advice on what’s real, what’s BS, what to buy, what not to buy, and perhaps most importantly, which guidance is worth following. In order to make sure we cover the right topics, we have created a very short survey so that we have some evidence-driven approaches to proving we’re focusing on the right areas.
Learn how to cut through the noise at the first ever Health IT Marketing Conference 4 Mar 2014 4:09 PM (11 years ago)
John Lynn, prolific blogger and health IT media magnate, and I are teaming up to produce and deliver the world’s first marketing conference focused on helping innovators cut through the noise when trying to market their healthcare and medical tech products to physicians, hospitals, and similar customers. Called The Healthcare IT Marketing Conference, it will cover very important subjects by some of the world’s best experts on those topics. Learn how to align the Payers, Beneficiaries, and Users (PBU) of your Health IT or MedTech product
Meet up with me at my HIMSS’14 sessions and events 21 Feb 2014 3:31 PM (11 years ago)
I’ll be leaving for HIMSS’14 on Saturday and plan to be around for meetings and sessions from Sunday through Wednesday. Here are some of the places I plan to be, catch me if you’re around: Sunday — covering the Venture Forum, CHIME, and special sessions. Heading to Susquehana Equity Capital cocktail party in the evening. Monday — covering a number of companies and speaking at two sessions, private dinner 3:30p speaking on Social Media and Influence at HIMSS Spot 4:30p speaking on data interoperability at SureScripts booth 2918 Tuesday — covering a number of companies and speaking at one session 11:00am speaking on Developer Platforms for Next Generation Healthcare Apps, room 209C 6:00pm hosting the New Media Meetup with John Lynn Wednesday — numerous meetings and events, finalizing coverage of companies
Join Stericyle Communication, John Lynn, and Shahid at the HIMSS’14 New Media Meetup 17 Feb 2014 5:12 PM (11 years ago)
John Lynn and I are hosting the 5th Annual New Media Meetup next week at the HIMSS Conference. This year’s HIMSS tradition is sponsored by Stericycle Communication Solutions. Thanks to Stericycle’s generous participation, John and I can host, quench the thirst of, and feed our New Media friends at Tommy Bahama Pointe, just a short walk from the convention center. We’ve come a long way from our first “meet the bloggers” event in Atlanta and we’re thrilled to have this “wooden anniversary” of the New Media Meetup which has expanded well beyond just bloggers.
Keeping medical device designs relevant in a big data world migrating to outcomes-driven payment models 17 Feb 2014 10:17 AM (11 years ago)
Last week I presented the closing keynote at the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West Conference & Exhibition in Los Angeles. MD&M has always been about what’s next in medical device design and this year’s event didn’t disappoint. While still being primarily focused on hardware, many smart device manufacturers came out to MD&M looking for advice on next generation architecture and thinking so that they could point their product roadmaps in the right direction.
Why do Avon sales reps selling makeup deserve better usability than hospital physicians saving lives? 2 Feb 2014 5:25 PM (11 years ago)
I was watching the Super Bowl tonight and lost interest after Bruno Mars’ very nice halftime concert so I started picking up some “Read it Later” articles I saved late last year; one specifically caught my eye. In December the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Avon is pulling the plug on a $125 million software system rollout which “has been in the works for four years after a test of the system in Canada drove away many of the salespeople who fuel the door-to-door cosmetics company’s revenue”.
Moving from paper-native to digital-native requires disciplined Healthcare Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) 2 Feb 2014 10:25 AM (11 years ago)
We’re all familiar with the idea that medicine is, slowly but surely, going from a paper-native to a digital-native industry. Most of our processes and procedures were designed in an environment where information started on paper and then was either scanned as a PDF document or entered into a structured electronic record in some software. Our current processes assume that if our software systems ever failed, we have paper records and could continue standard medical care without the electronic versions for a period of time.
Join me and other cheerleaders at the “Driving demand for Healthcare Interoperability” Pep Rally this Thursday in DC 2 Feb 2014 7:00 AM (11 years ago)
When I was growing up in Texas I remember that we used to have Pep Rallies before our major sporting events. The idea behind a pep rally is to get the juices flowing and get fans engaged and cheering for the home team. On Thursday this week the West Health Institute and the ONC are hosting “Health care Innovation Day, HCI-DC 2014: Igniting an Interoperable Health Care System” where the purpose is to get people cheering for interoperability between EHRs, health IT systems, medical devices, and related technologies.
If Meaningful Use disappeared, how would EHR vendors change their products? 31 Jan 2014 5:39 PM (11 years ago)
I’ve often said that Meaningful Use and the HITECH Act created false demand for EHRs and has (perhaps irrevocably) harmed innovation in the EHR space by standardizing features and function rather than outcomes and expectations. It’s a false demand because it concentrated too much on prescriptive, sometimes useless, and in many cases productivity-killing, functionality instead of focusing on what’s really needed — data interoperability and fostering innovation. John Halamka wrote something similar recently in his Advice to the new ONC chief (highlights in red below are mine, not John’s):
The causes of digital patient privacy loss in EHRs and other health IT systems 26 Jan 2014 12:55 PM (11 years ago)
This past Friday I was invited by the Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) Foundation to lead a discussion about privacy and EHRs. The discussion, entitled “Fact vs. Fiction: Best Privacy Practices for EHRs in the Cloud,” addressed patient privacy concerns and potential solutions for doctors working with EHRs. While we are all somewhat disturbed by the slow erosion of privacy in all aspects of our digital lives, the rather rapid loss of patient privacy around health data is especially unnerving because healthcare is so near and dear to us all.
HIMSS ’14 YourTurn is a conference customization option for unconference lovers 26 Jan 2014 12:01 PM (11 years ago)
Events such as the annual HIMSS Conference take months to plan and properly execute which means that some topics and subject areas that are being covered at the conference might not be as timely as they could be. Also, event planners and selection committees choosing topics for keynotes and presentations do a pretty good job at picking the sessions they think will be the most widely applicable to a large audience.
Guest Article: Digital health doesn’t stop with Meaningful Use, claims and payment technologies still matter 12 Jan 2014 4:49 PM (11 years ago)
“Digital Health” is often centered on EHRs and Meaningful Use to the detriment of many other technologies that can help improve patient satisfaction. To help make sure that we don’t forget how useful modern technologies are to actually getting paid for medical services, I invited Jay Fulkerson, president and CEO of Health Payment Systems (HPS), to take us through the most important issues surrounding claims and payment tech. Prior to his role at HPS, Fulkerson served as chief executive officer of Touchpoint Health Plan (which was acquired by United Healthcare) so he knows the payment space pretty well.
No, installing an MU certified EHR does not mean you’ll be document-free or paperless 20 Nov 2013 10:35 AM (11 years ago)
As I travel and speak with physician practices and hospital execs about health IT, I often hear questions about how practices can become paperless as they transition from manual to electronic processes. For those of you that have installed EHRs, you know that going digital does not mean that you’ll be paperless and you’ve probably had to buy more scanners and printers than you originally planned. For those of you that haven’t installed your EHR you’re probably puzzled so let me take a moment to explain why you shouldn’t believe vendors that tell you that you can be completely document-free or paperless in your environment.
The connected EHR, cooperative med devices, and accountable tech are the future of health IT 14 Nov 2013 5:28 PM (11 years ago)
Earlier this week I spoke at Atlanta Healthcare IT Leadership Summit on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and what I call “accountable tech“. I was pleasantly surprised to learn most of the audience agreed that ACOs can’t succeed without the right technology but am continuously disappointed as to how little we as an industry are doing about it. Accountable tech is health IT that truly enables the slow but emerging move from fee for service (FFS) based payments to value-driven and outcomes based payments.
Guest Article: When Things Go Wrong, The Caterer Gets The Blame 11 Nov 2013 5:24 AM (11 years ago)
Carl Bergman, a seasoned systems analyst and project manager, is Managing Partner of EHRSelector.com and has been sharing a number of ideas for improving EHR usability with me via email. Since I loved his enthusiasm and agreed with his ideas, I invited Carl to share with us some more detail around how to improve the EHR user experience. Here’s what Carl had to say: Earlier this year, we went to an outdoor wedding.
Why is there a lack of sophisticated UX, usability, and UI discipline in the current design of safety-critical apps and devices? 24 Oct 2013 5:41 AM (11 years ago)
A friend of mine, a User Interaction (UI)/User Experience (UX) designer and a usability expert that is doing some work at a technology-based medical device client, wrote to me wondering why many medical device companies don’t have much of a UX/UI and usability focused discipline in their marketing and product design teams. The simple reason is that many device manufacturers are still following top-down monolithic processes like waterfall instead of more agile processes that allow feedback-driven requirements definition.
Join me next week for a free webinar where I answer “How do we get beyond Meaningful Use rhetoric and ‘disruption in healthcare’ bloviation and into actionable innovation?” 21 Oct 2013 10:14 AM (12 years ago)
I speak at many of conferences and webinars each year and I have been hearing that attendees and audiences are starting to get tired of hearing about big data, Meaningful Use, and ‘disruption in healthcare’ topics without more actionable advice. Many entrepreneurs and speakers at the events are still focusing on why technology and IT solutions are helpful in healthcare but customers are more sophisticated these days and they want to know more about how to apply that knowledge into their daily routines.
Join me at the fifth annual Medical Device Connectivity Conference Nov 21-22 in DC (discount ends Monday) 19 Oct 2013 7:34 AM (12 years ago)
Now that Meaningful Use and ICD-10 are starting generate useful clinical data, it’s clear that electronic structured data in health and medicine is here to stay. One of the major missing pieces of the EHRs puzzle is direct integration of sensor-driven medical device data that can be used for both retrospective and prospective analysis. Many people believe that medical device data, like lab data, should be directly integrated into modern electronic health record solutions but that’s not happening as fast as many of us would like.
Summary report from O’Reilly’s Strata Rx (“data in healthcare”) Conference 8 Oct 2013 4:58 AM (12 years ago)
Last week I spoke at O’Reilly’s StrataRx Conference in Boston and like all O’Reilly events is was full of great content, terrific networking opportunities, and run with precision. My friend and O’Reilly editor Andy Oram wrote a great blog post summarizing the event and it’s worth reading: “Ticking all the boxes for a health care upgrade at Strata Rx – What is needed for successful reform of the health care system?
Why the health IT industry can accommodate hundreds of EHR solutions without major differentiation 8 Oct 2013 2:24 AM (12 years ago)
A few days ago Harvard Business Review’s Blog Network published “You Can Win Without Differentiation” and it reminded me of the many lectures I’ve given over the past few years on why the health IT industry tolerates hundreds of EHR and EMR companies that don’t really differ much from each other. A key point made in the article was: The trick is that when there is uncertainty about the quality of a product or service, firms do not have to rely on differentiation in order to obtain a competitive advantage.
Video: where I see health IT data today and where it’s probably going 23 Sep 2013 2:01 AM (12 years ago)
The nice folks at Iron Mountain, a publicly traded storage and information management services company, reached out to me during the summer and asked what I think the challenges are around healthcare data management. They recorded my answers in a series of interviews published as part of National Health IT Week (Sep 16th-20th). Here’s the first of the series: Many of you probably already know Iron Mountain as a records management, data backup and recovery, document management, and secure shredding company because they’ve been doing that kind of work for years across many different industries.
Guest Article: Creating a Culture of Adoption for EHRs and Health IT 9 Sep 2013 2:35 PM (12 years ago)
It is general knowledge among seasoned EHR implementers that EHR technology is not the primary concern when promoting EHR adoption (while there are many areas of potential improvements, the tech is generally “good enough” in most cases). There are, however, many challenges surrounding the deployments EHRs and one of the biggest is that not enough training or pre work done to prepare staff and resources. A great way to ensure EHR success is by creating a “Culture of Adoption,” which is something I discussed at length with my friend John Lynn after he attended a recent “think tank” style event hosted at TEDMED by the Breakaway Group (a Xerox Company).
Thoughts on HIT (technical) certifications vs. graduate degrees 3 Jul 2013 9:12 AM (12 years ago)
These days I’ve been getting an increasing number of questions from some very smart readers of this blog about whether or not graduate degrees or technical (HIT-specific or otherwise) certifications are worth the effort. I’ve written a few posts recently on similar topics and those are worth reviewing: Check out these videos if you’re looking for healthcare IT jobs The realities of getting a job in healthcare IT How to get a job in healthcare IT when you don’t have specific experience My view on HIT (or other technical) certifications The last post in the list above goes into specific detail about what I think about certifications but I didn’t talk much about graduate degrees so I’ll elaborate a bit more on that here.
How liability distribution is holding back certain types of innovation in healthcare 15 Jun 2013 8:13 AM (12 years ago)
I recently posted about my upcoming Healthcare Unbound presentation on why healthcare disruption is happening too slowly and requested some thoughts from my readers. This morning I woke up to receive these terrific remarks from Jeroen Bouwens which I’m sharing with permission: My theory as to what is holding back certain types of innovation in healthcare is the idea of distributing liability. As long as the ultimate responsibility, and therefore liability, lies with the Medical practitioner, they are extremely reluctant to accept automated systems making medical decisions.
Guest Article: Shakespeare in Namespace, or why Blue Button took off as fast as it did 15 Jun 2013 7:05 AM (12 years ago)
I had the privilege of working with Dr. Peter Levin as an outside technology strategy adviser while he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Veterans Affairs during the first Obama Administration. Peter’s a hard-charging, fast-moving, take-no-prisoners style senior technical executive; he was an entrepreneur, professor, and engineer long before he came into government so it was no surprise that he was able to accomplish a great deal during his tenure as the CTO of VA.
Writing safety critical software using an agile, risk-based, approach should be the norm in modern medical device development 14 Jun 2013 6:55 PM (12 years ago)
I first started using and mentoring developers on agile software development techniques like eXtreme Programming (XP) and Scrum over a decade ago. Often called “lightweight” methodologies, agile software development lifecycles have been generally misunderstood as lacking enough rigor and sophistication to be used in safety-critical systems. Many have erroneously assumed that Agile, Scrum, and related methodologies can’t really be implemented in risk-focused “important” industries like medical devices because they believe only classic waterfall will be accepted by the FDA.
Getting beyond the hype of disruption in healthcare and focusing on actionable innovation 13 Jun 2013 3:08 PM (12 years ago)
I’ve been invited to give a keynote talk at the Tenth Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference taking place in Denver on July 11-12. Healthcare Unbound is the “granddaddy” of recent Health 2.0, Connected Health, and similar Health Tech conferences. What I love about this specific conference, which I’ve only spoken a few times, is that for a decade now it’s focused on patient engagement, consumer-centric health, and connected health well before it was sexy and fashionable.
Guest Article: Achieving product simplicity in healthcare offerings is hard but possible 13 Jun 2013 7:13 AM (12 years ago)
_I’m a geek and proud of it — I love building software, launching new products, and am a fan of others that do it well. Recently I ran across the Berlin-based team from kenHub, a site focused on teaching anatomy online and helping medical students prepare for tests. I reached out to the team to ask them how they were differentiating themselves from the many other solutions available they said their goal was to simplify the process of learning using new didactic concepts to focus on memorizing and gamification elements to make it fun and engaging.
Guest Article: Iterative funnel management improvement to reduce health IT sales failures 27 May 2013 4:05 PM (12 years ago)
A frequent question I am asked by startups and their software focused leadership teams is, “how do we generate sales and what is the appropriate process to follow in creating our sales expectations.” My friend Steve Carbonara has been selling software to healthcare enterprises for years so I asked him to write a companion to his piece on_ __selling to hospitals. Steve is currently the Chief Sales Officer at Cohealo, Inc.
Join me at MedCity ENGAGE: Unlocking Patient Engagement through Innovation, June 5-6, in Washington DC 27 May 2013 6:53 AM (12 years ago)
Digital Patient Engagement (DPE) is a subject that’s been getting a great deal of attention these days, notably because MU Stage 2 specifically mentions DPE as a requirement for the next generation of certified EHRs. Personally I believe Patient Engagement is still confusing to most people and is probably in the Peak of Inflated Expectations phase of the Gartner hype cycle (another way to think about it is that the DPE noise level is probably much higher than useful signals coming out of the industry).
Guest Article: How to improve health IT products sales into physician practices and hospitals through better funnel management 6 May 2013 7:48 AM (12 years ago)
_A frequent question I am asked by startups and their software focused leadership teams is, “how do we generate sales and what is the appropriate process to follow in creating our sales expectations.” My friend Steve Carbonara has been selling software to healthcare enterprises for years so I asked him to write a companion to his piece on selling to hospitals. Steve is currently the Chief Sales Officer at Cohealo, Inc.
HIMSS13 debrief podcast with Gregg Masters, John Lynn, and Dr. Pat Salber 5 May 2013 7:54 AM (12 years ago)
Following HiMSS13 in New Orleans I sat down last month in a BlogTalkRadio broadcast with Dr. Pat Salber (@DocWeighsIn @HealthTechHatch), Gregg Masters (@2healthguru @ACOwatch) and John Lynn (@techguy) with a ‘debrief’ of our key HIMSS13 take-aways as well as our latest venture, Influential Networks. I covered the following topics in the podcast: The HIMSS 13 cheerleading and “echo chamber” Are we moving faster with MU than the industry can really accomodate?
Reducing Shadow IT in healthcare by embracing “good enough for HIPAA” business-friendly SaaS tools 5 May 2013 6:29 AM (12 years ago)
I’ve said repeatedly that any cloud / SaaS vendor that wants to be taken seriously in healthcare must be willing to sign a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and I was happy to hear that Box.com is now willing to do so. I’m quite pleased that we’re finally seeing some serious healthcare SaaS offerings from horizontal (non-healthcare-specific) vendors. Only when we move beyond healthcare-specific offerings will we be able to unshackle ourselves from the decades old legacy health IT vendors and that’s great news.
What’s Next for Healthcare Information Technology Innovation 4 May 2013 4:26 PM (12 years ago)
Last week the Greater Chicago Chapter of HIMSS invited me to participate in their healthcare technology webinar series. I covered the topic “What’s Next for Healthcare Information Technology Innovation?” and the screencast with audio has been posted here. I covered numerous topics that are helpful for entrepreneurs and engineers that want to create innovative healthcare technology.
Guest Article: Crawl, walk, and then run towards analytics and big data in healthcare 13 Apr 2013 4:44 PM (12 years ago)
I posted an article recently concerning the need to be more practical in the use of data vs. the need to go after the latest buzzwords, i.e. Big Data. Dan Reber posted a great comment on the article that I found enlightening so I reached out to him to expand on his thinking. Dan is in charge of product strategy at Origin Healthcare Solutions for their Business and Clinical Intelligence application (Precision.
Guest Article: How to use WebID to create Single Sign On (SSO) across Healthcare Systems 13 Apr 2013 4:25 PM (12 years ago)
I have been speaking and writing often these days about how single sign on (SSO) technologies are probably one of the most important components of health IT data integration. To help figure out how to integrate multiple systems using standards-based SSO approaches I reached out to Shahid Qadri, a Data Scientist and Software Developer for Applied informatics Inc. Qadri works on health data integration and semantic web and when I heard that he created a solution (which won second place) for an ONC single sign on challenge I thought he’d be the perfect engineer to help the rest of us.
Protect yourself from Shadow IT, embrace “good enough for HIPAA” secure cloud services like Box and Skydrive 8 Apr 2013 5:28 PM (12 years ago)
It’s a common misconception that if executives at hospitals or practices don’t have time to deliver sophisticated IT solutions to their users that users will just wait patiently and hope that solutions will arrive someday. However, there is a larger Shadow IT movement in many clinical settings than senior executives are willing to admit. Given the wealth of cloud offerings available, many of which have better security in the cloud than some on-premises “clinical” solutions, Shadow IT is growing and will cause more problems in the future as we try to reign it in.
Guest Article: Try not to fall for the Big Data in Healthcare hype, focus on actionable data that can improve clinical workflows 25 Feb 2013 5:39 AM (12 years ago)
Many readers write to me regularly to ask what I think about “Big Data” in healthcare. I tell them that Big Data in our field is generally more hype than reality right now but that there’s a lot of promise and opportunity. To help elaborate on why this might be the case I’ve asked my friend Naeem Hashmi, Chief Research Officer at Information Frameworks, to give us his thoughts. Naeem has written a number of books on the subject of informatics and analytics and been on the front lines of engineering large scale healthcare systems to generate data for clinical analytical purposes.
Guest Article: How to test health IT interoperability 24 Feb 2013 5:20 PM (12 years ago)
One of the key tenets of both the HITECH and Affordable Care Acts has been to drive improved patient care and reduction in cost by applying technology across all healthcare entities. A bigger challenge is how do to make multiple technology purchases interoperate within a provider network and / or across provider networks. There are solutions out there that can make it happen, but to make sure interoperability happens consistently, testing technology integration touch points is crucial but not easy without the right test infrastructure.
A few tips for those just getting started with content sharing and blogging 17 Feb 2013 12:09 PM (12 years ago)
The popularity of blogs has been a given for years now but now that experienced professionals have tools like LinkedIn Groups, Google+, and even Facebook I often get asked for tips on what kind of content/information is “best” to be shared. I don’t know that I have any definitive answers but here are some suggestions based on the kinds of content I share with my readers: Focus on actionable advice and talk to people as if they’re smart enough to act on what you’re suggesting.
How to differentiate your health IT product and services, another webinar next week 24 Jan 2013 4:02 PM (12 years ago)
John Lynn and I teamed up with Cari McLean (@carimclean) and Michael Gaspar (@MichaelGaspar) from the HIMSS Social Media team to talk about how to differentiate your products and services at the HIMSS 2013 Conference. Cari and Michael are two social media experts and were a joy to work with. We were humbled that they invited us to help HIMSS Exhibitors understand how best to use social media to get the most out of their 2013 Conference investment.
Just because we have apps for smartphones doesn’t mean we have real mobility in healthcare 21 Dec 2012 3:46 AM (12 years ago)
__App47 CEO and co-founder** Chris Schroeder** hosts a great podcast series called __“What’s Appening!” in which he covers topics around enterprise-grade Mobile Application Management for securely deploying, managing, and analyzing business-critical mobile apps. Chris interviewed me for a recent episode__ in which we spoke at length about the management of enterprise healthcare apps, what mobility means in healthcare, and why technically-savvy clinicians are the only real salvation for the healthcare IT industry.
Leveraging digital signage for more than patient education and marketing – real service improvement 20 Dec 2012 11:20 AM (12 years ago)
Earlier in the week I was in a waiting room for a physician visit and as I sat there for much longer than I wanted, I kept wondering “what patient number am I and how many people will be seen before me?” Given that we are in the trailing days of the year 2012 with some significantly advanced technology at our fingertips it bothered me even more that there was no way to know what was going on without asking the front desk receptionist every 5 minutes.
What’s next for healthcare information technology innovation? 18 Nov 2012 4:06 PM (12 years ago)
In Nashville on Friday, at the Vanderbilt Healthcare Conference, I gave a short talk on a panel focused on the question “What’s next for healthcare information technology innovation?” The talk focused on answering a couple of key questions: What does innovation in healthcare mean? Where are the major areas in healthcare where innovation is required? And it had a few key takeaways: Understand health tech buyer fallacies Understand PBU: Payer vs.
‘Practical Data’, ‘Actionable Data’ and ‘Useful Data’ vs. ‘Big Data’ in healthcare and medical devices sector 11 Nov 2012 3:03 PM (12 years ago)
Having recently spoken at about a half dozen conferences on the subject of big data in government and healthcare I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re focusing, at least in healthcare, on the wrong topic. When we’re dealing with individual patients, and even population health across multiple patients, the size and velocity of the data (“big data”) isn’t anywhere near as important as “actionable data” or “useful data” – by focusing on, and frankly scaring people with, the term “big data” we’re undermining the potential immediate utility of all kinds of “small data”.
Do’s and Dont’s for effective “lightening” demos of your health IT product 24 Oct 2012 3:25 AM (12 years ago)
I’ll be moderating the the first of 3 “Innovator’s Challenge” sessions at the Partners 2012 Connected Health Symposium & Expo. It’s not easy for a company to be selected for a prestigious demo session like this and if the demos are done right they can help the company gain traction in the market. The Innovator’s Challenge sessions use the “lightening” format where each participant has 5 or fewer minutes to do their demo before the next one starts (barely 30 seconds of transition between demos).
Essentials of telehealth and telemedicine, top Do’s and Don’ts, mHealth and other health IT advice 11 Oct 2012 12:17 PM (13 years ago)
I recently participated in a wonderful 55 minute video interview conducted by Nirav Desai for his_ **Hands On TeleHealth Interview **show_. I wanted to thank Nirav for leading an insightful discussion; you can watch the video on Nirav’s site but I wanted to capture the essence of the interview in the transcription below. Nirav: What are the essentials of Telehealth and Telemedicine? Shahid: Telehealth and Telemedicine are about extending health care from physical institutions, where it has most recently resided, to where the patients can receive care at home or other more convenient locations.
Join me in Boston on Nov 1st and 2nd to learn about how to build health IT cloud agents and med device gateways 3 Oct 2012 4:05 PM (13 years ago)
I’ve been invited back to speak at the Fourth Annual Medical Device Connectivity Conference (MDCC), one of the best practical and “get the job done” kind conferences that I attend all year. I’ll be talking on a panel, giving a short lecture, and doing another workshop. If you haven’t signed up for MDCC yes, please jump on over to their website and register. This is one of my favorite events of the year because it’s a “doers” (not just a “thinkers”) conference :-).
How do you decide which features to add to your software? 25 Sep 2012 4:50 PM (13 years ago)
Given the well-warranted focus on design these days it’s always difficult to find the right balance between features that we should add to our software and those that we leave out. I was running a class recently on how to build product roadmaps for health IT apps / medical device software and the question of how we should decide which features to add came up. Here’s are just a few of the facets I talked about during that lecture:
Should you partner with another technology / services company to help sell your product? 18 Sep 2012 12:00 PM (13 years ago)
Over the last few weeks a number of clients and readers have asked a similar question: I’ve been approached by company X to partner with us. Do you know them and what do you think we should do? Since many startups, especially technology firms, partner for the wrong reasons and end up having failed or suboptimal relationships I thought I’d give as simple an answer as possible for partnering.
First wave of MU Stage 2 (2014 Edition) Draft Test Procedures Released 9 Sep 2012 6:48 AM (13 years ago)
If you’re in charge of getting your software ready for MU Stage 2, please be sure to keep a regular eye on the 2014 Edition Draft Test Procedures page on the ONC site. Here’s the overview: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has posted the first wave of draft Test Procedures and applicable test data files for the 2014 Edition EHR certification criteria. The Test Procedures, once finalized and approved by the National Coordinator, will be used for testing and certifying EHR technology under the ONC HIT Certification Program (formerly referred to as the Permanent Certification Program or PCP).