Over the past few weeks I have been at several different events. First up was a one day AMIA education covering HIT in general. Dr. Halamaka of Beth Israel fame was there and did address the PHR claims data mess from a few weeks back. Nothing too shocking, just back to the drawing board to figure out what next. He has been on the cutting edge of HIT over the past few years and discussed the chip he has embedded with his personal health data and how he had his genome scanned a few years back. Just a really interesting guy all around. Interestingly there was a report that he has given up on embedded chips as a means to access PHR data. At least for now. I think the concept is viable, just a little before its time.
The big event of the last few weeks was the American Telemedicine Association Annual Conference in Vegas. This is an event Estenda has attended for the last five years. It is a great networking event with lots of technology vendors. This was their largest conference ever. In the past vendors have been very focused on remote video technology and only somewhat devices. This year there was an explosion in personal health devices and the associated software to manage the data. Telemedicine is coming into its own. One keynote speaker noted the fact that there are now over 10,000 articles on PubMed that reference telemedicine. Telemedicine is no longer the up and coming technology. It is here and here to stay.
Finally, I attended a one day seminar sponsored by PAeHI. PAeHI is the Pennyslvania eHealth Initiative. Several topics were discussed including the Obama Healthcare dollars and how to best use them, an overview of the Medical Home concept, and telemedicine in general. The closing panel was lead by Mark Frisse. I am familiar with Mark from working on the RWJF Project HealthDesign Grant. His is a dynamic individual that always brings something interesting to the table. In part he discussed the initiative he lead in Tennessee to create a state-wide medical record repository. From the sounds of it, they largely ignored all standards and said let’s just get something done! We will figure it out later. In the end it worked, they have the data, and have been able to generate some interesting reports.
As for the next session, I will be attending a training session on the NHIN Connect program in June. It will be interesting to get an indepth look at what it is all about and how it works. From monitoring the messageboards it appears to be having a bunch of issues, but nothing that can’t be worked through.
Posted by RJ 
