Interoperability
National Health IT Week kicked off this Monday in Washington, DC, with a litany of prepared speeches and big names in the health IT arena. Among the overarching themes? Interoperability and patient engagement.
Electronic health record behemoth Epic Systems has inked a deal with a lobbying firm to work on its interoperability image -- one that has left a perception that Epic has a closed system that does not easily work well with other EHR systems.
CMS and ONC disappointed many CIOs and IT teams around the country on Aug. 29 when it issued a final rule for Stage 2 meaningful use that lacked the flexibility on reporting that so many had counted on -- and perhaps expected, because what they had proposed seemed like a reasonable compromise to them.
PwC US announced on Friday it would put in a bid for the Department of Defense EHR contract, proposing an open source system. The PwC team would go head-to-head with IBM and Epic, which are also bidding on the project. Epic is among the most widely adopted EHR systems in the country.
After it was reported that U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park was leaving his post, immediate speculation was that a Googler and a Twitter attorney were in the running to succeed him. Turns out: President Obama hired both.
In part two of his Healthcare IT News Q&A, Micky Tripathi lays out the ways interoperability can finally be brought to fruition in the U.S. over the coming decade. Hint: the federal government and the private sector each have big jobs to do.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has been reshaping itself for the future and is working on its strategic plan alongside a 10-year roadmap for interoperability -- and that is against the backdrop of health IT reports put out by other federal entities, notably JASON and PCAST.
Micky Tripathi talks about the JASON Task Force, the market pressures pushing for data sharing and the way forward for health information exchange.
U.S. chief technology officer Todd Park is reportedly packing up to head back West -- Silicon Valley, specifically.
In testimony before ONC's Health IT Policy Committee on Aug. 15, Epic President Carl Dvorak made his case that the EHR giant is far more engaged with data sharing than some critics would contend.