John D. Halamka

See the following -

Halamka's Report on the Joint HIT Standards and Policy Committee Meeting

All the members of the ONC Federal Advisory Committees met in Washington to review delivery system reform and the Interoperability Roadmap. We began the meeting with a thank you to Jodi Daniel, who will be leaving ONC after 10 years of service. Elizabeth Holland presented a data update on the Meaningful Use program. She noted that 2015 attestation will open Jan 4, 2016-Feb 29, 2016. The Meaningful Use Stage 2 final rule has not yet been released (but rumor suggests it may be released later today). Next, Karen DeSalvo presented a Delivery System Reform Update  setting the context for the kinds of interoperability needed in the future as fee for service is replaced by population-based payment.

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Halamka's Report on the June 2015 HIT Standards Committee

The June 2015 HIT Standards Committee focused on celebrating the accomplishments of those individuals who have reached their federal advisory committee term limits.  Most served 6 years...Karen DeSalvo thanked each one and I offered comments about their unique contributions, changing the fundamental trajectory of standards in the US from a 1990’s “EDI” payload model to a 2015 “Facebook” Application Program Interface model.   Their leadership has brought modern, open web standards to the healthcare domain, specified controlled vocabularies, and established appropriate security. They will be missed.

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Halamka's Report on the May 2015 HIT Standards Committee Meeting

The May 2015 HIT Standards Committee focused on an in depth review of the ONC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, with the goal of providing guidance to ONC by June as to which standards should be included in final rule, which should not be included, and which should be identified as directionally appropriate for inclusion in future regulation.The meeting began with the ONC announcement that the HITSC workgroups would be disbanded in June and replaced by focused task forces.

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Halamka: 2015 In Review

It’s now December and as each year ends, I always look back on the challenges and achievements of the past 12 months. Here’s my sense of 2015. ICD10 - billions were spent, countless other projects were delayed, and the transition occurred on October 1 without a major incident...Did we get our money’s worth? I have argued and will continue to assert that ICD-10 benefited no one. The diagnoses used are more variable so there is less precision in their use. Clinical documentation (in general in the industry) does not have the specificity needed to justify the more granular ICD-10 codes. The notion that quality measures can now be computed more accurately from ICD-10 coded administrative data is just not true...

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Halamka: A Time of Great Turmoil in Healthcare IT Policy Making

We are in a time of great turmoil in healthcare IT policy making.   We have the CMS and ONC Notices of Proposed Rulemaking for Meaningful Use Stage 3, both of which need to be radically pared down. We have the Burgess Bill which attempts to fix interoperability with the blunt instrument of legislation. Most importantly we have the 21st Century Cures Act, which few want to publicly criticize. I’m happy to serve as the lightening rod for this discussion, pointing out the assumptions that are unlikely to be helpful and most likely to be hurtful. Read More »

Halamka: What is the Optimal Future Role for ONC?

As Meaningful Use winds down and incentive dollars are fully spent, what is the optimal role for ONC going forward? Some pundits have suggested that ONC step aside and return all aspects of HIT policy and technology to the private sector.   Others have suggested top down command and control of HIT including centralized governance to ensure interoperability. Harmony is when all parties feel equally good about the path forward. Compromise is when everyone leaves the table equally unhappy. Here’s my view about the future of ONC that includes points from both sides.

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HL7 Launches Joint Argonaut Project to Advance FHIR

Press Release | Health Level Seven International (HL7) | December 4, 2014

Leading Health IT industry vendors and providers collaborate with HL7 to accelerate development and adoption of FHIR Read More »

Interoperability and the Trough of Disillusionment

Every technology has an adoption journey. The classic Gartner hype curve travels from a Technology Trigger  to the Peak of Inflated Expectations followed by the Trough of Disillusionment. It often takes years before organizations reach the Slope of Enlightenment and finally achieve a Plateau of Productivity. Have you noticed that Congress and the popular press have entered the Trough of Disillusionment for EHRs and interoperability over the past month? Congressional staffers writing the 21st Century Cures bill (which is not yet law) seem to have concluded...

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John Halamka Looks Back at 2014

2014 was quite a year. Thinking back to December 2013, I cannot believe that so much has happened. Let’s take a look at the major HIT events that shaped 2014 and what they portend for 2015 Read More »

John Halamka Uses Big Data Analytics In Healthcare To Fight Wife's Cancer

Kristen Lee | SearchHealthIT | September 1, 2015

When John Halamka, M.D., CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and his wife, Kathy, found out she had stage 3 breast cancer in 2011, they turned to big data analytics in healthcare to find the best treatment plan. Fortunately for Halamka and his wife, the Boston area is home to 17 Harvard-University-affiliated hospitals, including Beth Israel, that have opened their data for queries via a free open source, Web-based application called i2b2. Any medical record system in the country can connect to i2b2's database and EHR, Halamka said.

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Jonathan Perlin’s ‘Elevator Pitch to the President’ on Health IT

David Raths | Healthcare Informatics | September 26, 2016

What would you say if you had to make an “elevator pitch” in just three to five minutes to the President of the United States about what to focus on in terms of the nation’s healthcare system? That was the question put to panelists at a Sept. 26 meeting of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Jonathan Perlin, M.D., chief medical officer of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), responded: “It’s all about the data”...

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Moving healthcare into a new state of openness

John D. Halamka, Jonathan Bush | Modern Healthcare | February 13, 2015

The future of healthcare belongs to social, mobile, analytics and the cloud. Although most industries have embraced these technologies, the healthcare IT industry has been slow to adopt them. The country has taken good first steps to digitize the paper-based medical industry, but now it is time to build on what we've done, enhancing usability, better engaging patients/families, and preparing for the future of reimbursement, which is based on value, not more healthcare.

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National Patient Identifier with FHIR is the answer

Direct Secure messaging has been implemented across the country by many physicians and hospitals due to ONC Meaningful Use requirements. Direct is great for clinician to patient interaction or even consults in some cases. Is this really the way that we should be sharing patient information? Ideally, we want the information in the patient record not just between two clinicians out of band and not stored in the patient history. This way anyone entering later in the patient care scenario has access to the information should it become necessary and the patient has also consented to the release. Read More »

New Zealand Can Lead Healthcare IT

I’ve been in New Zealand this week, meeting with government, academic, and industry leaders to discuss the IT challenges ahead - social networking-based teamwork for health, mobile applications, precision medicine analytics for decision support, and cloud computing all within a framework of protecting privacy. I believe that New Zealand has a unique opportunity to leapfrog the rest of the world with healthcare IT breakthroughs that show the rest of us what is possible from a 4.5 million person learning lab. Why? The perfect storm for innovation requires alignment of technology, psychology, and implementation. New Zealand is divided into 20 District Health Boards which improve the health of their populations by delivering high quality and accessible health care...

Notes on the April Meeting of the HIT Standards Committee

The April Standards Committee began with a tribute to Jon Perlin, who is leaving his chair role of the HIT Standards Committee so that he can focus on his chair role at the American Hospital Association. Jacob Reider, Deputy National Coordinator will serve as the Standards committee chair. I will continue as vice-chair. Read More »