Comments on: Monday Morning Update 12/8/08

By: ONC WONK

ONC WONK — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:30:35 +0000

re: ONCHIT- I believe ONCHIT coordinator is a federal, career posting, and that Dr. Kolodner expects to remain after Jan 21st (heard from a well-connected source).

By: ObamaGirl

ObamaGirl — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:31:22 +0000

In the September 17th, 2008 Gartner report #G00161139 entitled North American Enterprise CPR Generation Evaluation… it stated

Key Findings
• Three vendor offerings (Cerner, Eclipsys and Epic) have achieved Generation 3 status,
with several others only narrowly missing this milestone.
• The critically important areas of controlled medical vocabulary (CMV), clinical workflow
and clinical decision support are still lagging behind the other CPR capabilities.
• Given the slower-than-expected rate of development and implementation, it is unlikely
that the first Generation 4 product will appear by 2010, as initially anticipated.

By: Jim Turnbull

Jim Turnbull — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:27:56 +0000

Congratulations to Mark Tepping on his decision to retire. I know that I am one of many that will miss Mark’s ‘positive cynicism’ and wonderful wit. He is one of those wonderful people that has exerted an incredibly positive influence on our industry in a valuable, yet humble way. I wish him well…but at the same time I will miss his intellect, guidance and friendship.

By: Jedi Knight

Jedi Knight — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:41:22 +0000

Not sure if VistA is truly “open source” since they don’t really feed in enhancements from the outside world last I checked, and those using it need to monitor enhancements published by VA to make sure they don’t clobber something locally developed. But, this is a nerdy nit-pick. And, in the long run internal VistA gets eventually steamrolled by the Washington lobbyist efforts on behalf of large vendors anyway. I’m not sure how impartial Gartner is…

I wish CCHIT would focus on certifying compliance with HITSP standards. As it currently operations, CCHIT is only relevant to EMR vendors by CCHIT’s definition which is well outside what many in HIT worry about…

By: Al Borges, MD

Al Borges, MD — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:27:06 +0000

Hi Jupiter:

I agree wholeheartedly. Actually we all need to read the **fantastic** article from ZNET on CCHIT on 12/1/2008-

“To CCHIT or not to CCHIT is the question”
URL: http://healthcare.zdnet.com/?p=1559

Closing statement-
————————————————
“No single vendor or certification process can build an IT infrastructure that both enables innovation and distributes it universally. But standards can. Open standards, offered royalty-free as they are through the World Wide Web Consortium, can do that. That is my model for what the CCHIT can and should become. If it doesn’t want to do that, it [CCHIT] should either go away or be ignored.”
————————————————-

I still say that it should go away and be ignored now- no preconditions are necessary. It’s a competition stifling company with a not-for-profit facade put together to enrich the “enterprise” EMR vendors through numerous mechanisms.