BLOG on IT/IS in Healthcare & Life Sciences Joerg Schwarz on Healthcare [Health + Care]

We have discussed on this blog privacy provisions in HIPAA, especially considering new privacy regulation and extensions associated with the increased investment in EMR. Recent articles like this one at The Healthcare Blog demonstrate both importance and urgency of the issue.

We are very excited to offer you in co-operation with our partner  FairWarning® a free, educational webinar exploring privacy regulation and its impact. The webinar was live on March 9th at 2pm Eastern / 11am PST, featuring Deven McGraw, Director of the Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.  On January 27th, 2009, Deven testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary regarding privacy in healthcare, and along with others played a pivotal role in finding a workable privacy balance in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA of 2009).  Deven is now able to share first-hand insights on the coming healthcare privacy and HIPAA regulatory environment.

If you missed the live event, you can download a pdf version of the presentation with very useful information.

Healthcare data storage requirements keep growing, and regulatory requirements keep changing every year.  The need for fast access to medical images and patient records under any condition remain high.  How can this exponential data growth be managed - while protecting critical data - in an environment where budgets are severely constrained? As discussed earlier, tiered, enterprise wide, consolidated data management is the solution. The question is how to get there.

We prepared an informational webinar to discuss enterprise data management and consolidation for healthcare providers. Join industry leaders from Sun, BridgeHead Software, and IDC for an open discussion of the challenges facing healthcare data management professionals today.  Learn the best practices others have adopted to cost-effectively lower the total cost of ownership of your mission critical data.

This webinar is part of a series of informational web events which we will provide free of charge. If you missed it live, you can go here to listen to the replay.

It's a good thing the Obama administration reads literature about the importance of privacy protection for the acceptance of electronic health records (EHR) (at least it seems so). Not only does the current stimulus plan include funding for the promotion of EHR, it also comes with very strong incentives to keep data private. This will be, based on studies conducted in the e-Commerce space, important for acceptance.

The current discussion about privacy risks caused by pharmaceutical advertising in electronic health record networks is helpful to highlight the difference between privacy regulation in HIPAA controlled institutions, and the uncontrolled Health 2.0 space, which is already very dependent on advertising.

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By Kurt J. Long, all rights reserved FairWarning, Inc.

It should come as no surprise that if the U.S. Federal government jump-starts Electronic Health Record adoption by investing public monies, then appropriate privacy and security safeguards will be asked of the healthcare industry.  The eyes of the world are on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, for the sake of patient privacy, the future of Electronic Health Records, and to some degree, the ability of the western world to compete globally, the world watches with great anticipation.

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Scott McNealy, as I recall, used to say "There are people who would pay extra to get their bicycle delivered in pieces, so they can assemble it themselves". Last week we organized an Industry Solutions review for health care and government at our EBC in Menlo Park - with very positive feedback from attending solution and channel partners, and also some leading Systems Integrators. I want to take this event as an opportunity to share with you which industry offers and architectures we are working on. And spoiling the punch line, I can already tell you that our goal is delivering integrated solutions that provide the fully assembled "bicycle" at the lowest possible cost, so our customers do not have to spend time and effort assembling it on their own. Because if you do have to assemble yourself, you WILL pay extra, if you want it or not.[Read More]

Payers have made tremendous progress in assembling personalized health records based on claims data. They use them, combined with health assessments, educational programs, decision tools and incentives, to create subscriber facing portals as competitive differentiators. Health 2.0, which was characterized by disconnected and fragmented offers, could quickly be superseded by these highly integrated sites. Since the data used in Health 3.0 is quality controlled claims or e-prescribe data, it can also be used by care providers for decision making. While the first generation of Health 3.0 tools seems to be home grown, it is already clear that standardization will further help to re-define ROI and accelerate speed.  [Read More]