Make the EHR a safe harbor from criminal prosecution

Health Technology
January 16, 2014

The governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, devoted all of his annual speech to the problem of drug addiction. On the national news, Shumlin points out the link between prescription painkillers and death, and he calls for treating opiate addiction as a medical problem no different than cancer. The White House praised the governor’s position.

Meanwhile in another part of Washington, I’m involved in the federal effort to link the law enforcement Prescription Drug …

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Make the EHR a safe harbor from criminal prosecution

Will CommonWell solve one of the biggest problems in health IT?

Health Technology
March 23, 2013

The big news at HIMSS13 was the unveiling of CommonWell (Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, athenahealth, Greenway and RelayHealth) to “get the ball rolling” on data exchange across disparate technologies. The shame is that another program with opaque governance by the largest incumbents in health IT is being passed off as progress. The missed opportunity is to answer the call for patient engagement and the frustrations of physicians with EHRs …

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Will CommonWell solve one of the biggest problems in health IT?

Health information exchanges and the problem of consent

Health Technology
March 25, 2012

Will health information exchanges provide patient access portals or not?

There are 60 or so regional health information exchanges (HIEs) in the works. They are beset with issues: technology, regulations, competing stakeholders, payment reform uncertainty, sustainability and consent. The last thing they need, it seems, is citizen clients.

It turns out that HIEs have a choice of strategies, at least in the next year or two. Now that proposed Stage 2 Meaningful …

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Health information exchanges and the problem of consent