Comments on: News 3/7/08

By: p_anon

p_anon — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:04:13 +0000

Healthcare and SOA:
http://www.infoq.com/articles/soa-healthcare

While I don’t think the technology behind SOA will be adopted by Healthcare IT anytime soon (as we are already using HL7 interfaces), I found this article interesting in an academic way–i.e. it’s neat to see what is possible if we adopt a more “open” architecture.

Today I’m defining “open” as “‘open standard’ interface that does not require vendor assistance to create, test, activate, or use”.

By: Matt Quinn

Matt Quinn — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:23:56 +0000

AHRQ’s National Resource Center for Health IT (www.ahrq.hhs.gov) has an Evaluation Toolkit for organizations embarking on Health IT projects.

Here’s a link: http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=5554&mode=2&holderDisplayURL=http://prodportallb.ahrq.gov:7087/publishedcontent/publish/communities/k_o/knowledge_library/features_archive/features/ahrq_national_resource_center_evaluation_toolkits.html

Or go to http://www.healthit.ahrq.gov and click on “Health IT tools”

By: ONCHIT observer

ONCHIT observer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:39:33 +0000

Re: Brailer. Wasnt he always very smug? It also seems more and more possible that the ONCHIT post was always just a stopping point on the way to private equity…

By: HeardItToo

HeardItToo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:18:55 +0000

I’ve also heard the Allscripts/Misys rumors. I wonder what’s Allscripts strategy if it’s tue. Misys is apparently investing considerable money in enhancements to the MyWay product (in time it will look less and less like iMedica, apparently) and is bringing sales staff to headquarters to train. Why would Misys higher ups be investing time and money if Allscripts was about to buy them up just for the client base? If Allscripts does purchase Misys, my guess is the old A4 product will go away and My Way will take its place.

By: The Alchemist

The Alchemist — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:23:39 +0000

RE: ROI-KEY- MOUSE: Call me an “old-fart, usesta-wazer” typical baby-boomer mentality, but I have never been convinced by any of the most brilliant diagnostics instrumentation ROI submitted to me by your wonderful MBA guys.

The rationales, vapor-dollars / vapor-uros saved read like a Grimm’s Fairy Tale adventure; “Once upon at time, there was this big hospital that wanted to put all its things into one big box so that everyone could see what they have in the box and then one day the thought they could save a bunch of money by using paper bags instead of boxes and then…

Please someone out there in HISie-land put me out of my misery and tell me to shut my pie-hole and retire. I have been operating for the last thirty years under the assumption that it was more admirable to save human lives than to save (hard-earned?) money. Yes, I will concede that it takes money to fund the mission as the good nuns once said (and we all know what happened to most of their missions), but how much money should I anticipate to save my wife’s life if she succumbed to an MI or worse, CVA based on the most brilliant mathematical ROI computation? How much money can I hope to save the hospital if I let shoddy medical quality continue to thrive in today’s healthcare quasi-business practices?

This is what I know; I practice shoddy healthcare by continuing to manually record any data from off-line processes. “I feel badly about this, please forgive me or fix it for me.”
Let me see, should it be “do not over charge or was it, do not over harm?” I wonder which was supposed to come first; guess I was missed that class in med school.

Slow day in IT. Hope tomorrow picks up.