News

Experts disagree on value of electronic health records

Covering Health (Association of Health Care Journalists Blog), April 2, 2013 — Richard Asinof
Electronic health records are a tool, the bottom floor on creating standards to move from mere billing and data collection into a platform to change the way health care is delivered, the way it is paid for, and the manner in which patients are engaged, according to Farzad Mostashari, M.D., Sc.M., the national coordinator of health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…

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Getting Data to Patients: Technology + Policy

ABBI and BlueButton+

Over the past six months, I’ve had the privilege of working with the Automate Blue Button Initiative on BlueButton+ specifications for sharing data with patients.  Since ABBI’s core goal of enabling automated patient access to health data is so closely aligned with SMART’s vision, it was exciting to see the initial (Push-based) BlueButton+ specifications implemented at HIMSS 13 this month.

Progress in ABBI’s Pull Workgroup has been slower.  We’re hashing out the details of an OAuth2-based framework that puts patients in control over when and how apps can fetch health data.  An important question has been: how can we enable an ecosystem where thousands of apps connect to providers across the country in a trusted way?

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Health IT innovations, value of EHR systems discussed

KHI News Service, March 19, 2013 — Phil Cauthon
“The children of doctors should not be using better technologies in the third grade than the doctors are using in a hospital,” said Dr. Ken Mandl, co-director of the SMART project, speaking last week to a group of about 40 journalists at the Association of Health Care Journalists national conference…
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Free Webinar: SMART C-CDA Tools for MU2

Getting SMART about C-CDA: 
Faster Meaningful Use with Clinical Benefits

Tuesday, April 2, 2013
12:00–1:00 p.m. EDT

Register

Join the SMART Platforms team at noon EDT on April 2 for a roll-up-your-sleeves webinar to kick-start/speed-up your Consolidated CDA implementation for MU2. These tools will help you:

  • Generate high-quality C-CDA data exports that are easier to consume
  • Ensure your C-CDA imports flow smoothly on data from other vendors
  • Test your implementation and support end-users with clinical apps

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Beyond HIT Interoperability: Open Platforms are the Key

Open Health News, March 14, 2013 — Edmund Billings
I want to begin by sharing well-known information for the sake of comparison. Both the Apple and Google Android platforms welcome the introduction of new and (sometimes) highly valuable functionality through plug-n-play applications built by completely different companies…
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Value of SMART Discussed in Video from HIMSS13

In this video interview recorded yesterday at the 2013 HIMSS annual conference, Doug Fridsma, Director of the ONC’s Office of Standards and Interoperability, tells MedCity News how SMART fits into the ONC’s accountable care strategy.

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How do apps for patient data exchange fit into the ONC’s strategy for accountable care? (video)

MedCity News, March 5, 2013 — Stephanie Baum
The multitude of approaches to improve the exchange of patient data is a big trend at HIMSS 2013. One facet of the government’s drive towards achieving that is through the SMART project. Short for Substitutable Medical Apps and Reusable Technologies, it’s made up of a group…
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Is Interoperability Possible in HIT? And if it Is, Do We Even Want it?

The Health Care Blog, February 15, 2013 — Edmund Billings
Anyone who understands the importance of continuity of care knows that health information exchange is essential. How are we supposed to cut waste and duplication from the healthcare system and truly focus on patient welfare if doctor B has no idea what tests doctor A conducted, or what the results were?…
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Another step forward for data liberation; Check out the SMART C-CDA Scorecard!

Family Health Guy, January 23, 2013 — Sean Nolan
My job at HealthVault is to be a pragmatist. If somebody has information they want to get into HealthVault, my #1 job is to get it there—no matter what format it’s in. That means we accept hand-entered data, scans, uploaded files, CDs and DVDS, Blue Button files, structured CCR and CCD documents, device formats, you name it….
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Introducing the SMART C-CDA Scorecard

The SMART team is proud to introduce the C-CDA Scorecard, a web-based tool to help vendors, providers and other health data holders produce high-quality clinical summaries for Meaningful Use Stage 2.

Get ready for Meaningful Use Stage 2

Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) is the specification cited by Meaningful Use Stage 2 for creating structured clinical summary documents. C-CDA documents are required by MU2 to support transitions of care, to enable patient-driven “view/download/transmit” objectives, and to promote medical record data portability.

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