Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS)

See the following -

Clinical Decision Support Strategies for Electronic Case Reporting and its Open Source Connection

A key element of public health surveillance is the reporting of infectious and certain non-infectious conditions to state, local, and tribal public health agencies (PHA) around the United States. Historically, there have been a number of key challenges with the process of case reporting that is pervasive in the United States today. To help overcome some of these barriers, an effort has been underway to move the process of case reporting to electronic. A key component of the emerging electronic care reporting (eCR) strategy is the use of clinical decision support (CDS) to help clinical care organizations determine if a reportable condition is present in a patient's record. Multiple approaches have been identified for this CDS service, including a centralized model being implemented today, and several distributed options which will likely become equally viable. Given the size, diversity, and decentralized nature of healthcare enterprises, it is likely that all three approaches for CDS discussed in this article will be deployed simultaneously.

Read More »

Electronic Case Reporting (eCR) Takes Front Stage at PHI2018 Conference

But the real buzz at the conference seemed to be about electronic case reporting (eCR). This refers to the national effort to replace the current paper and FAX process of submitting reportable conditions from clinical care sites to state and local public health agencies with a more automated electronic process fed from electronic health records (EHRs)...HLN demonstrated the workflow for eCR at the HIMSS18 Interoperability Showcase. However, we did not see a lot of interest on eCR at the HIMSS conference. At PHI2018 we had significant interest, both among public health officials who were anxious to see how they could initiate eCR in their jurisdictions, and other vendor and stakeholder groups who seemed to feel eCR was becoming viable and more “real.”

Read More »

HIMSS20 - The Open Health Companies That Were Going to Participate

The HIMSS20 conference has been cancelled as a result of concerns due to the global spread of the coronavirus. Although the conference is not taking place, we have decided to publish a variation on our annual HIMSS conference Open Health Guide. Open Health News has published Open Health Guides to HIMSS conferences almost since our founding. They were widely read with thousands of reads each. So they are now a tradition for our publication and there were many great open health companies that were going to have exhibits at the HIMSS20 conference as well as presentations. Dominant health IT vendors spend over a billion dollars a year in PR and marketing for their lock-in solutions. Unable to match that kind of PR power, the annual HIMSS conference has been one of the few opportunities where Open Health companies have had to present their solutions to the world.

Read More »

HLN to Present Innovative Open Source Solutions at HIMSS19 Interoperability Showcase

Press Release | HLN Consulting | January 22, 2019

For the third straight year, HLN Consulting, a leading medical informatics consulting company, will participate in the Interoperability Showcase at this year's HIMSS19 Global Conference and Exhibition which is being held in Orlando, FL from February 11-15, 2019. The Showcase itself runs on February 12-14 and consists of a series of connected demonstrations which are collaborative projects between 6-8 organizations using interoperability standards to exchange information and improve the quality and value of the care provided. Together they develop a storyline, or scenario, that contextualizes the value of their demonstration and tells the story of a patient, caregiver, or provider. This year HLN will participate in two scenarios...

Read More »

ONC HITAC Public Health Data Systems Task Force Releases Recommendations

On November 10, 2022 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) accepted and approved the recommendations of its ad hoc Public Health Data Systems Task Force. As discussed in an earlier post, the Task Force has been meeting since August 2022 and was charged with examining how improvements might be made in ONC certification rules for criteria related to public health data submission. In addition, and perhaps for the first time, the task force was also charged with developing recommendations related to the public health side of the equation: how public health data systems and/or standards might improve to ensure a smoother flow of information with clinical care. Read More »

ONC HTI-1 NPRM Through Public Health Eyes

On April 18, 2023, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published for comment the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing (HTI-1) Proposed Rule which proposes new  provisions from the 21st Century Cures Act and makes updates to the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program). Weighing in at over 500 pages (the pre-release version), this proposed rule provides some refinements to existing ONC programs, corrections to others, and extensions to yet other provisions. ONC provides additional materials about this proposed rule, including fact sheets, blog posts, and records from topical webinars on their website. Note especially the information provided about a joint ONC-CDC sponsored informational webinar which took place on May 24, 2023, and is available for playback on the site.

Read More »

Open Health Guide to HIMSS19

The annual gargantuan HIMSS conference is back in Orlando with over 45,000 participants from more than 90 countries. There will be more than 1,300 vendors at the exhibit floor and more than 300 educational sessions. As with the last several conferences, the focus on open source as the key underlying technologies of health information technologies continues to increase. In previous conferences, we have seen the rise of open source technologies, in particular, those related to interoperability such as FHIR and Blockchain. A large number of sessions at HIMSS19 will be focused on another set of technologies powered largely by open source software and design principles such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing.

Read More »

Open Source Solutions For Public Health Case Reporting and COVID-19

The United States is continuing its slow emergence from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states have started to reopen, with bars, restaurants, and many workplaces starting to fill. As people begin to spend more time together again, it is critically important that public health agencies do everything they can to help prevent further spread of the infection and continue to monitor the level of infection within the population. Data is an important tool that public health has to understand what is going on in the country. Years of limited government investment and neglect of current systems has limited public health's ability to meet the challenges of managing both localized outbreaks and pandemics.

Read More »

Ready or Not: New Report on Protecting the Public's Health

The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) released its 2019 edition of what it hopes will be an annual report, Ready or Not: Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism last February. The ground-breaking report warns about key global challenges ahead, like the risk of a flu pandemic; the impact of weather pattern changes due to climate change; the dangers of antimicrobial resistance, and others, and tries to offer advice on how to prepare for them.

Read More »

So I Survived HIMSS19…

This was perhaps more of a fete than it initially seems. The conference was massive, with over 40,000 attendees. It centered around a trade show exhibit hall that spanned multiple football fields in length. In some ways, it was so big that I felt somewhat discouraged from attending some educational sessions because they were located so far from where I was hanging out that I could get back and forth in time. So I spent most of my time at the Interoperability Showcase since HLN was participating in two of the use cases: Immunization Integration & CDS, featuring our ICE open source immunization evaluation and forecasting system...

Read More »

Two New Federal Reports Released That Have Major Public Health Impacts

Two new Federal reports were recently released that have a public health impact. First, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its 2022 Report to Congress: Update on Access, Exchange, and Use of Electronic Health Information. This report covers the current state of adoption of health information technology and access to electronic health information guided largely by the requirements of the 2016 21st Century Cures Act. The report observes that, “Although tremendous progress has been made with EHRs that capture and support the use of health information about individuals, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in health IT systems that support capturing and using population data. The challenges exposed during the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic pinpointed the importance of health IT to monitor population health regarding public health surveillance of testing, diagnosis, and vaccine distribution.”

Read More »

US Senate Releases Draft Future Pandemic Preparedness Plan - Asks for Feedback

On June 10, 2020 the US Senate released a white paper titled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic" under the signature of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. The white paper has five recommendations to address future pandemics based on lessons learned from COVID-19 and the past 20 years of pandemic planning. "The five recommendations...along with a series of questions at the end of this white paper, are intended to elicit recommendations that Congress can consider and act on this year," Senator Alexander said in a statement, adding that "I am inviting comments, responses, and any additional recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to consider. This feedback will be shared with my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican." This feedback from the public will be accepted until June 26, 2020... Read More »

2018 Public Health Informatics Conference

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
August 19, 2018 (All day) - August 23, 2018 (All day)

It’s been nearly two years since the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) released its multi-article supplement, “Public Health Informatics: A Call to Action,” in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. Since then, it’s only become clearer that to effectively serve communities in today’s information-driven world, public health – and its cross-sector partners – must advance and strengthen its capability to transform data into action (e.g., services, interventions, and policies). But forging that capability is no easy feat. Challenges such as underdeveloped information technology (IT) infrastructure, lack of training, and insufficient workforce capacity have made public health informatics seem either intimidating or vastly inaccessible to public health professionals. Despite this, there is a role for informatics within every health department. The 2018 PHI Conference exists to help you learn that role through sessions, workshops, and peer-sharing opportunities that:

Read More »