scholarly journals Population Health Informatics Can Advance Interoperability: National Program of Cancer Registries Electronic Pathology Reporting Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 985-992
Author(s):  
Lori A. Pollack ◽  
Sandra F. Jones ◽  
Wendy Blumenthal ◽  
Temitope O. Alimi ◽  
David E. Jones ◽  
...  

PURPOSE Given the reach, breadth, and volume of data collected from multiple clinical settings and systems, US central cancer registries (CCRs) are uniquely positioned to test and advance cancer health information exchange. This article describes a current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) cancer informatics data exchange initiative. METHODS CDC is using an established cloud-based platform developed by the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) for national notifiable disease reporting to enable direct transmission of standardized electronic pathology (ePath) data from laboratories to CCRs in multiple states. RESULTS The APHL Informatics Messaging Services (AIMS) Platform provides an infrastructure to enable a large national laboratory to submit data to a single platform. State health departments receive data from the AIMS Platform through a secure portal, eliminating separate data exchange routes with each CCR. CONCLUSION Key factors enabling ePath data exchange from laboratories to CCRs are having established cancer registry data standards and using a single platform/portal to reduce data streams. NPCR plans to expand this approach in alignment with ongoing cancer informatics efforts in clinical settings. The 50 CCRs supported by NPCR provide a variety of scenarios to develop and disseminate cancer data informatics initiatives and have tremendous potential to increase the implementation of cancer data exchange.

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. e100241
Author(s):  
Job Nyangena ◽  
Rohini Rajgopal ◽  
Elizabeth Adhiambo Ombech ◽  
Enock Oloo ◽  
Humphrey Luchetu ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe use of digital technology in healthcare promises to improve quality of care and reduce costs over time. This promise will be difficult to attain without interoperability: facilitating seamless health information exchange between the deployed digital health information systems (HIS).ObjectiveTo determine the maturity readiness of the interoperability capacity of Kenya’s HIS.MethodsWe used the HIS Interoperability Maturity Toolkit, developed by MEASURE Evaluation and the Health Data Collaborative’s Digital Health and Interoperability Working Group. The assessment was undertaken by eHealth stakeholder representatives primarily from the Ministry of Health’s Digital Health Technical Working Group. The toolkit focused on three major domains: leadership and governance, human resources and technology.ResultsMost domains are at the lowest two levels of maturity: nascent or emerging. At the nascent level, HIS activities happen by chance or represent isolated, ad hoc efforts. An emerging maturity level characterises a system with defined HIS processes and structures. However, such processes are not systematically documented and lack ongoing monitoring mechanisms.ConclusionNone of the domains had a maturity level greater than level 2 (emerging). The subdomains of governance structures for HIS, defined national enterprise architecture for HIS, defined technical standards for data exchange, nationwide communication network infrastructure, and capacity for operations and maintenance of hardware attained higher maturity levels. These findings are similar to those from interoperability maturity assessments done in Ghana and Uganda.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (01) ◽  
pp. 067-073
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta Berner ◽  

Objective: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2017 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed by the two HIM section editors of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH descriptors and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of 15 candidate best papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: Health Information Exchange was a major theme within candidate best papers. The four papers ultimately selected as ‘Best Papers’ represent themes that include health information exchange, governance and policy issues, results of health information exchange, and methods of integrating information from multiple sources. Other articles within the candidate best papers include these themes as well as those focusing on authentication and de-identification and usability of information systems. Conclusions: The papers discussed in the HIM section of IMIA Yearbook reflect the overall theme of the 2018 edition of the Yearbook, i.e., the tension between privacy and access to information. While most of the papers focused on health information exchange, which reflects the “access” side of the equation, most of the others addressed privacy issues. This synopsis discusses these key issues at the intersection of HIM and informatics.


Author(s):  
Antonio Celesti ◽  
Maria Fazio ◽  
Antonio Puliafito ◽  
Massimo Villari

In this paper the authors focus on sensing systems supporting data exchange among several healthcare administrative domains. The challenge in this area is twofold: efficient management of a huge amount of data produced by medical devices, bio-sensors and information systems, sharing sensed data for scientific and clinical purposes. The authors present a new information system that exploits Cloud computing capabilities to overcome such issues, also guaranteeing patients' privacy. Their proposal integrates different healthcare institutions into a federated environment, thus establishing a trust context among the institutions themselves. The storage service is designed according to a fully distributed approach and it is based on the wide-used Open Source framework Hadoop, which is enriched to establish a compelling federated system. They adopt the XRI technology to formalize an XML-based data model which allows to simplify the classification, searching and retrieval of medical data.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (01) ◽  
pp. 13-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. McCoy ◽  
A. Wright ◽  
G. Eysenbach ◽  
B. A. Malin ◽  
E. S. Patterson ◽  
...  

Summary Objective: The field of clinical informatics has expanded substantially in the six decades since its inception. Early research focused on simple demonstrations that health information technology (HIT) such as electronic health records (EHRs), computerized provider order entry (CPOE), and clinical decision support (CDS) systems were feasible and potentially beneficial in clinical practice. Methods: In this review, we present recent evidence on clinical informatics in the United States covering three themes: 1) clinical informatics systems and interventions for providers, including EHRs, CPOE, CDS, and health information exchange; 2) consumer health informatics systems, including personal health records and web-based and mobile HIT; and 3) methods and governance for clinical informatics, including EHR usability; data mining, text mining, natural language processing, privacy, and security. Results: Substantial progress has been made in demonstrating that various clinical informatics methodologies and applications improve the structure, process, and outcomes of various facets of the healthcare system. Conclusion: Over the coming years, much more will be expected from the field. As we move past the “early adopters” in Rogers' diffusion of innovations' curve through the “early majority” and into the “late majority,” there will be a crucial need for new research methodologies and clinical applications that have been rigorously demonstrated to work (i.e., to improve health outcomes) in multiple settings with different types of patients and clinicians.


Author(s):  
Gerald Beuchelt ◽  
Harry Sleeper ◽  
Andrew Gregorowicz ◽  
Robert Dingwell

Health data interoperability issues limit the expected benefits of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. Ideally, the medical history of a patient is recorded in a set of digital continuity of care documents which are securely available to the patient and their care providers on demand. The history of electronic health data standards includes multiple standards organizations, differing goals, and ongoing efforts to reconcile the various specifications. Existing standards define a format that is too complex for exchanging health data effectively. We propose hData, a simple XML-based framework to describe health information. hData addresses the complexities of the current HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA). hData is an XML design that can be completely validated by modern XML editors and is explicitly designed for extensibility to address future health information exchange needs. hData applies established best practices for XML document architectures to the health domain, thereby facilitating interoperability, increasing software developer productivity, and thus reducing the cost for creating and maintaining EHR technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 084-090
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta S. Berner ◽  

Objectives: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2020 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature for the IMIA Yearbook HIM section was performed by the two section editors with the help of a medical librarian. We searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers using both MeSH headings and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of the fifteen best candidate papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: The three major themes of Health Information Exchange (transmitting, sharing, and accessing patient health-related data and information) (HIE), Data Quality, and Privacy and Security make up 80% of the fifteen papers, with individual papers on personal health records, information governance and the professionalism of the HIM field. Conclusions: Traditional HIM concerns about HIM practice and workforce as well as issues about the data in electronic health records (EHRs) including data quality, coding, health information exchange among entities within the healthcare systems and privacy and confidentiality continue to be a large part of the HIM research literature. Although there was little research applying these themes to pandemic concerns, HIM professionals have the expertise to make ccontributions to public health informatics research and this research would benefit from their involvement.


2011 ◽  
Vol 02 (03) ◽  
pp. 250-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Volk ◽  
S. Simon ◽  
D. Bates ◽  
R. Rudin

SummaryBackground: The ability to electronically exchange health information among healthcare providers holds enormous promise to improve care coordination and reduce costs. Provider-to-provider data exchange is an explicit goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and may be essential for the long-term success of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. However, little is known about what factors affect clinicians’ usage of health information exchange (HIE) functionality.Objective: To identify factors that affect clinicians’ HIE usage - in terms of frequency of contributing data to and accessing data from aggregate patient records - and suggest policies for fostering its usage.Methods: We performed a qualitative study using grounded theory by interviewing clinician-users and HIE staff of one operational HIE which supported aggregate patient record functionality. Fifteen clinicians were interviewed for one hour each about what factors affect their HIE usage. Five HIE staff were asked about technology and training issues to provide context. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. Recruitment excluded clinicians with little or no familiarity with the HIE and was restricted to one community and a small number of specialties.Results: Clinicians were motivated to access the HIE by perceived improvements in care quality and time savings, but their motivation was moderated by an extensive list of factors including gaps in data, workflow issues and usability issues. HIE access intensities varied widely by clinician. Data contribution intensities to the HIE also varied widely and were affected by billing concerns and time constraints.Conclusions: Clinicians, EHR and HIE product vendors and trainers should work toward integrating HIE into clinical workflows. Policies should create incentives for HIE organizations to assist clinicians in using HIE, develop measures of HIE contributions and accesses, and create incentives for clinicians to contribute data to HIEs.


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