by medicaltechont | Mar 2, 2010 | Canada, emr, Technology
Ontario must move faster with a series of legislative and regulatory measures in order to meet its commitment to create electronic health records for all residents by 2015, a senior official with eHealth Ontario says.
“It’s time the province decided if it’s really committed to this or not,” argues Doug Tessier, senior vice-president of development and implementation for the agency responsible for implementing the government’s multibillion-dollar electronic health records (EHR) strategy.
Progress on the province’s EHR file was hampered by the eHealth Ontario scandal surrounding compensation for consultants, Tessier says. The scandal triggered an audit, which concluded that the provincial government mismanaged over $1 billion and ultimately led to the resignations of former health minister David Caplan and former deputy minister of health Ron Sapsford.
“The swirl and scandal has hurt us,” says Tessier, considered the government’s expert on electronic health systems.
But Ontario’s EHR woes predate the scandal, Tessier says, arguing that there have consistently been delays in making key political decisions since the province first committed to implementation in 2000.
Deliberations on major decisions within the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care have often taken two years, Tessier says. “If you are really committed to this, two years is too long. … To my mind, if the government is not committed to something, they hem and haw.”
Moreover, even the basic, legal framework for patient EHRs — which will require changes to laws governing patient record management and privacy — still isn’t in place, more than seven years after the province established the agency, Tessier says. Not only are “two or three pieces of new legislation” still required, “but we’ve also got to undo a number of pieces of [existing] legislation.”
The government must also do more persuade health regulatory colleges to overhaul policies that impact on EHRs, Tessier argues. “Let’s put our arm around them and gently bring them into the 21st century. … With the regulations, the legislation and the policy changes that government has to do, that’s not so gentle. That’s on the critical path. If they don’t do it, we’re blocked completely.”
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by medicaltechont | May 20, 2008 | Google, Technology
I always wondered what would happen if Google Health decided to launch in Canada. Would there be an effect on the Canadian Healthcare system? Or would PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) get in the way?
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About a year ago Google announced that it would launch a service to allow users to store their own health records on a secure website. There was a lot of discussion about what it would look like but the wait is over. A free public “beta test” version of Google Heath is now operational at google.com/health.
The service allows users to create an online profile that includes information about any medical conditions, test results, procedures, immunizations and medications. You’re also asked to enter in your height, weight, blood type and race. With this information, the service, in theory, could offer you tailored medical information as well as serving as a central hub storing your medical records.
Eventually the goal is for users to be able to import their health information from the secure websites of care providers. To that end, Google already has arrangements with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the Cleveland Clinic as well the online pharmacies from Longs Drugs, Walgreens, RXAmerica and Medco. A relationship with Quest Diagnostics allows users of its services to import their lab tests. Google also has a link to the American Heart Association’s heart attack risk assessment site so that you can get your customized risk assessment without having to retype your height, weight, cholesterol and other into the Heart Association’s site.
One nice feature is the drug interaction alert that lets you know about potential conflicts between drugs you take. Of course, you have to remember to enter all your drugs for that to work.
Because none of my providers are among Google’s initial partners, I had to enter all the information myself. Fortunately, it was easy to find because the health clinic I use most of the time has its own online service that stores this information. I’m pretty happy with what my provider offers but it’s an island of information. If, for example, I were to have a blood test done elsewhere, that information would not be on my provider’s site nor is there a way I could even type it in. Google is trying to solve that problem by creating a health record keeping system that is controlled by the user, not the health care provider. This is especially important for those of us who don’t belong to a health maintenance organization (HMO) because we might visit different physicians who are not affiliated with each other.
Clearly privacy is the number one concern when it comes to any online medical information service. Google’s health privacy policy states that “You control who can access your personal health information. By default, you are the only user who can view and edit your information.” You can, however choose to share your information with others. The company also promises not to “sell, rent, or share your information” and will let you delete your account or any information in it at any time.
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by medicaltechont | May 6, 2008 | Dictation, Technology, Voice
One of the big surprises in my career, watching technology develop, has been the failure of voice interfaces. Chalk it up to accents and the complexity of English. Listen to a Southerner or a Scotsman and the problem becomes obvious. Better yet try listening to your kids.
The only way to make it work is to make it work. And thanks to the immense growth in military medicine, you have a platform on which this forcing can happen.
Nuance Communications says its Dragon NaturallySpeaking is now being used by over 6,000 clinicians, because it was mandated by the military as the preferred way to document care with its AHLTA system.Whatever you think of AHLTA or the military, the bottom line is you now have a complete voice-to-text interface for medical diagnosis, with 6,000 users and growing.
AHLTA consultants say the system is saving clinicians time, and enabling the creation of more complete medical records.
Nuance has now begun the process of transferring this experience into civilian medicine, which I hope means that interfaces for McKesson, Cerner and Microsoft are coming soon.Once we have a beachhead for spoken interfaces in medicine, perhaps we can expand it into other areas, and speech will finally take its rightful space as the right way to talk to a computer.
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by medicaltechont | Apr 24, 2008 | Technology, Uncategorized
Dr. James Swan has transformed Rouge Valley Cardiology into an almost totally digital operation. In northeastern Scarborough, far from the bustle of downtown Toronto, a cardiology clinic has been doing pioneering work in software and image management for the past six years.
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by medicaltechont | Apr 21, 2008 | Technology
Intel Corporation today announced Intel® SOA Expressway for Healthcare, software that provides an efficient way to exchange healthcare information inside hospitals and with health information networks. The product will allow healthcare providers to more easily connect with one another so that each can provide better care while benefiting from reduced integration costs.
Until now, the sharing of patient information among healthcare network participants has been hindered by the steep costs and complexities of proprietary data and integration services. Based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare offers a cost-efficient solution to this problem by providing an efficient and scaleable way to translate, process and connect any data format across a healthcare network.
In addition, Intel has created a group of validated independent software vendors (ISVs) that provides best-of-breed capabilities to deploy a complete health network powered by the Intel SOA Expressway. Current validated ecosystem vendors include Apelon, Infotech Global (IGI), Initiate Systems, Oracle and Red Hat. Services provided by these vendors include controlled medical vocabulary translation, clinical patient portal applications, enterprise master patient index, clinical data repository and operating system support. The validated ecosystem helps complete next-generation SOA architecture for healthcare data interoperability.
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by medicaltechont | Apr 21, 2008 | Technology, The Internet
A few months back, I told you about how my neck had gone bad, really bad. At that time, I was in the middle of a six-month dive into pain, alleviated only by gobbling unwholesome quantities of Percoset. Three weeks ago last Friday, I had an amazing surgery that relieved my pain and gave me a neck that feels 20 years younger.
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