Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

There are a lot of organizations betting on Apple's plan – now it's time for you to weigh in on the idea.

Just weeks after David Shulkin was ousted as VA Secretary, Scott Blackburn, one of the leaders of the department's EHR modernization project, announced his departure on Twitter.

Dignity Health's chief digital officer explains why he thinks Apple can succeed for population health and precision medicine efforts where other PHR launches have not.

UNC Health Care has reached Stage 7, the highest level on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model, which measures healthcare facilities on their use of advanced analytics and health information technology. The designation applies to all UNC facilities: its hospitals, physician practices and applied analytics. "The Stage 7 honors confirm UNC Health Care's place as a national leader in health IT and analytics," UNC leaders said in a statement. "Most importantly, these rankings represent real and meaningful benefits for our patients in terms of quality, safety, and overall care." UNC Health Care is the only health system in the U.S. to achieve Stage 7 status on all three HIMSS Analytics domains – inpatient, outpatient and analytics. [Also: Apple to launch Health Records app with HL7's FHIR specifications at 12 hospitals] "Achieving Stage 7 recognition further reinforces the success our teams have reached in building an information technology infrastructure that enhances the ability of our providers, care teams, and staff to care for our patients," said UNC's Chief Information Officer Tracy Parham, RN, in a statement. The Stage 7 designations for UNC Health Care include its hospitals and associated clinics at Caldwell Memorial Hospital in Lenoir, Chatham Hospital in Siler City, High Point Regional, Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville, UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, and UNC REX in Raleigh. At each of these hospitals, the awards recognize the utilization of a complete EHR infrastructure, including external health information exchanges, advanced data/analytics, and comprehensive plans and support in place for information technology governance, disaster recovery, privacy, and security. "Starting in 2012 and 2013, our focus centered on establishing system-wide information systems and building baseline capabilities," said Bill Roper, dean of the UNC School of Medicine and CEO of the UNC Health Care System. "Now, just five years later, we are recognized as national leaders in health IT by multiple organizations. "These rankings represent real and meaningful benefits for our patients in terms of quality, safety and overall care," he added. UNC Health Care is one of 40 health systems nationwide collaborating with Apple – and one of only 10 in the beta test group – to allow patients to easily download their electronic health record data from the My UNC Chart patient portal and integrate the data with Apple's existing personal data tracking and reporting features in the iOS Health app. Twitter: @Bernie_HITNEmail the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Experts point to the need to demonstrate value, as well as challenges integrating genomic data into EHRs and handling massive amounts of data.

Penn Medicine chief information officer Mike Restuccia shares four tactics for ensuring success with big data projects.

Medical groups are seeking customizable and cloud-based systems and emerging technologies like speech-recognition capabilities.

The Michigan hospital joins a growing legion of smaller hospitals that are subscribing to cloud-based EHR, revenue cycle and patient portals, among other services.

From community hospitals to major federal government agencies, this month has already seen a number of notable happenings in the electronic health record space.

The New York City-based health system tailored its care pathways to fix inefficiencies and gained back big ROI from the hard work it did with staff workflows and process improvements.