New Book on Health Informatics Released

Health Informatics: Practical Guide for Healthcare and Information Technology Professionals was just published last month by Bob Hoyt of University of Florida. This is the fifth edition and I had the privilege of writing a chapter for the book on eResearch. The chapter takes the view point of the clinical researcher, outlining informatics tools from work prepatory to research, initiation of studies, study recruitment, data management and data analysis. It concludes with future trend, such as, big data and social media.

The book overall includes a broad variety of chapters reflecting the maturity of health informatics from bioinformatics to clinical informatics. Written as a textbook, it will no doubt serve the growing needs of health informatics programs popping up in every state.

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Discussion of PHRs and Patient Data Access on iHealthbeat

In an new story on iHealthbeat, Barriers Continue To Limit Patient Access to Electronic Health Data, I am quoted on the topic  Basically, I continue to be disappointed on the slow adoption of PHRs and the fact that Google Health is now gone. My statement at the end of the article is the most significant – how can providers strategically use PHRs as chronic disease management tools? There have been some pilot programs on this. Perhaps with the incentives to prevent readmissions and management of patients to reduce costs, such as, the Medical Home and ACOs, some provider groups will take a second look at PHRs.

At the same time, I wonder if mobile apps, which have seen huge adoption, need integration with PHRs or visa versa. Disease management and wellness activities could be tracked through apps and added to one’s PHR. This what Google Health tried to do and HealthVault still does. Yet only a small percentage of those with chronic or life threatening illnesses have benefited.

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Presentation on Meaningful Use and EMR in Research

Last week I was invited to present to a medical school class on bioinformatics. My topic included EMR data standards, meaningful use and the use of EMR data in research. The session was very interactive and not totally captured in the slides. The challenge was presenting to medical students who are used to group activities, case studies and a research-based curriculum.

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Who Owns Your Data?

In a radio interview from Inside the Media, Hugo Campos, an e-Patient with an implanted defibrillator (ICD), talked about his desire to have the data from his device. His logical argument is that the device is now part of his body and so he should have the right to the data from the device. So far he has been unsuccessful in getting his provider or the manufacturer to assist him with this. While rights to one’s own health data is becoming a reality through the Affordable Care Act and Meaningful Use and through initiatives like the Blue Button, device data is new territory. One could argue that the data is too complex for the lay person to analyze but that is the same argument which was made not so long ago about medical records in general. With the growth of apps and health information on the web, complex medical data is becoming more accessible.

This new territory needs more discussion. See the comments on the podcast page. Also, you can follow Hugo on the ICD Users blog.

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Mobile Devices, Patient Self-monitoring and Clinical Workflow

This is the topic of my new blog post on HealthWorks Collective. Already received lots of traffic on Twitter and lots of views. Would like to see more about mobile standards in health care from Motorcycle Guy and others.

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What am I working on? Check my Bookmarks

I am glad that Delicious is still around and being enhanced. I have used it for years to organize and tag my bookmarks. Now with almost 1200 bookmarks and several hundred tags, I often search my links to find a resource for a presentation or article. Recent links include:

• West Wireless Health Institute which has a good handle on new care delivery models
• Secondary Uses Service, description and and access. | The NHS Information Centre - glad to see the National Health Services is utilizing EMR data for quality and research
• National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or NCATS - the new NIH center replacing the NCRR which inlcudes the Clinical and Translational Science Awards which I am now a part of
• A post on O’Reilly Radar - Epatients: The hackers of the healthcare world
• Eye on FDA - the new FDA blog
• CIRD – Partners HealthCare Clinical Informatics R & D

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2012 Predictions for Health IT

Like others (see Daniel Kraft) , I have my own opinions about what trends will be most influential for health IT in 2012.

• Big Data and real-time analytics and decision support – IBM Watson and Explorys are in this space, others will follow and adoption will grow enabled by cloud computing, NOSQL/Hadoop and natural language processing
• Continued focus on EMR adoption as more health systems pursue meaningful use. This will again be the main focus at HIMSS as well as other conferences
• Social media in health care will continue to grow among patients as the e-Patient movement continues to gain in strength and public awareness and as advocates like the Reshape Innovation Center find creative uses to influence the future of health
• Mobile health and apps usage will expand but what is needed is a way to integrate personal health information, such as, PHRs and apps that promote wellness and disease management. For health care professionals, apps and mobile devices need to be integrated into clinical workflow rather than being an adjunct or distraction
• Research will be further enabled by EMR data as more academic medical centers develop data warehouses for research and quality studies and as initiatives like QueryHealth make it possible to combine data across systems and states using health information exchange and other tools

There are many more but these are the primary one’s I will be following.

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2012 Predictions – Analytics

There are many top 10 predictions for 2012 out there. I could probably add my own for eHealth and mHealth.
These 10 Business Intelligence Trends for 2012 from Tableau Software apply to healthcare as much as any business.

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Year in Review – 2011 Accomplishments

In addition to having a great year traveling and presenting, I had additional accomplishments:

• Appointed as the Co-director for Biomedical Research Informatics for the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative, an NIH funded program through the Case Medical School
• Joined the Editorial Board of Tech Now Briefs of the American Association of Medical Colleges
• Invited to contribute to a theme issue on social media for Frontiers from the American College of Healthcare Executives
• Became a featured blogger for HealthWorks Collective
• Appointed as a reviewer for HIMSS 2012 abstracts – a new role for me
• Authored chapter on eResearch to a book on medical informatics to be ePublished in 2012
• Celebrated 30 years as an employee at Cleveland Clinic
• Leading a project to develop a clinical data warehouse for research
• Approaching 1000 connections on LinkedIn (969)
• 2881 followers on Twitter
• Klout score hovering around 42
• Invited to be on the advisory board of a health related startup

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Year in Review – Travel

It was a big year for traveling to conferences:

• February – HIMSS Annual Conference in Orlando – spoke at the Social Media center twice and presented on a panel on social media
• March – AMIA Clinical Research Informatics Summit in San Francisco. Two podium presentations (CKD Registry and REDCap business model) and two posters
• April – attended TEDx Maastricht in the Netherlands and a side trip to UMC Radboud in Nimegen.
• April – ACRT meeting (Association for Clinical Research Training) in Washington, DC – panel presentation on REDCap.
• May – Patient Experience Summit at Cleveland Clinic with Enoch Choi presenting
• June – consulting at a hospital in Michigan on data warehousing
• September – Medicine 2.0 Congress in Palo Alto, CA. Poster presentation
• October – American Association of Medical Colleges meeting on Big Data in Washington, DC
• October – Clinical and Translational Science Awards Informatics meeting at the National Institutes of Health. Bethesda, MD – poster presentation
• October – Panel at Case Medical School, Cleveland on Social Media in Clinical Trials
• November – Senior Workers Conference in Minneapolis, MN – presentation on Social Media and Electronic Medical Records
• December – Center for Health Services Research and Policy at MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland, on Disease Registries using EMR Data

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