Medicity announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company a patent for technology that enables secure and effective identification and exchange of electronic patient health records among authorized care providers. The patent is the third that Medicity has received in the last two years for its HIE technology. The technology allows competing health care organizations to share patient information to improve care quality -- while ensuring that only authorized caregivers can access their patients' health information -- without requiring them to mix their data with other organizations in a single, centralized repository.

The health care industry is focused on creating community health records that offer physicians a complete view of their patients' medical histories -- regardless of where the patients received care in the past -- enabling more informed and efficient patient care. An important and challenging aspect of creating a patient's electronic health record is the ability to gather health data from hospitals and other health care sources and ensure it is associated with the correct patient. For example, Whitepages.com lists 5,106 people named "Maria Ramirez" in California alone. Keeping track of the right Maria Ramirez is essential for a physician trying to gain a complete view of her medical history from records held by hospitals, physician practices, laboratories, pharmacies and other healthcare providers.

The patent # 8,095,386 issued to Medicity covers the technology and method of securely locating, indexing, matching and sharing patient records between health care organizations -- ensuring the right records are associated with the right patient while enabling each organization to maintain control of its own data.

"This latest patent acknowledges the value of our innovative technology in enabling health systems to look beyond the four walls of their own organization and participate in community-wide collaboration around a patient's care," said Ashish Shah, senior vice president and chief architect at Medicity. "The system and method we invented is tuned specifically for community collaboration, better equipping providers and other key stakeholders to respond to a rapidly changing health care environment."

Medicity's technology enables each health care organization participating in a health information exchange to tune its patient-matching rules -- which may include telephone numbers, addresses, insurance numbers, and license or identification numbers -- without affecting the rules configured by other organizations within that network. It also helps networks identify and prevent creation of duplicate records, improving accuracy and integrity of data.

 

 

New standards allow disparate data sets to integrate

Led by researchers at University of Oxford (UK) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) at Harvard University, (USA), more than 50 collaborators at over 30 scientific organizations around the globe have agreed on a common standard that will make possible the consistent description of enormous and radically different databases compiled in fields ranging from genetics to stem cell science, to environmental studies.

The new standard provides a way for scientists in widely disparate fields to co-ordinate each other's findings by allowing behind-the-scenes combination of the mountains of data produced by modern, technology driven science.

"We are now working together to provide the means to manage enormous quantities of otherwise incompatible data, ranging from the biomedical to the environmental," says Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Ph.D, Team Leader of the project at the University of Oxford's Oxford e-Research Centre.

This standard-compliant data sharing effort and the establishment of its on-line presence, the ISA Commons – www.isacommons.org, is described in a Commentary published today in the journal Nature Genetics. The commentary is signed by all the collaborators.

"An example of how this works at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute is that we can now find a relationship between experiments involving normal blood stem cells in fish and cancers in children", says Winston Hide, director of HSCI's new Center for Stem Cell Bioinformatics, and an associate Professor of Bioinformatics at the Harvard School of Public Health.

ISA Commons is also being used at Harvard Medical School (HMS) by the HMS LINCS (Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures) project, led by Professors Peter Sorger and Timothy Mitchison.

It was necessary to establish common data standards, say the commentary's authors, because of the tsunami of data and technologies washing over the sciences. "There are hundreds of new technologies coming along but also many ways to describe the information produced" said Sansone, noting that "we can take a jigsaw puzzle of different sciences and now fit the many pieces together to form a complete picture".

"One of the things that I find most empowering about this effort is that now small research groups can begin to store laboratory data using this framework, complying with community standards, without their own dedicated bioinformatics support. It is a bit like Facebook allowing everyone to create their own website pages - suddenly you don't need to be an expert in computing to get your data out to the rest of the world", says Dr. Jules Griffin, of the University of Cambridge.

"What we like about it is its unifying nature across different bioscience fields and institutions", says Dr. Christoph Steinbeck, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, The European Bioinformatics Institute.

And "it also has the potential to work for large centers too", says Scott Edmunds, editor of the journal published by open-access publisher BioMedCentral and BGI Shenzhen (previously known as the Beijing Genomics Institute) the world's largest genomics institute, "We are working with this framework to help harmonizing and presenting may large-data types as possible in a common standardized and usable form, publishing it in the associated GigaScience journal."

The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology today announced a Discharge Follow-Up Appointment care transitions challenge – the second as part of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative.  With the support of Health 2.0 and Partnership for Patients, ONC launched the Discharge Follow-Up Appointment challenge in support of ONC’s Investing in Innovation (i2) program.

The i2 Initiative is a bold new effort to spur innovations in health IT.  The program utilizes prizes and challenges to facilitate innovation and obtain solutions to intractable health IT problems.  Aligned with the Obama administration’s innovation agenda, i2 is the first federal program to operate under the authority of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.

Today’s challenge aims to stimulate the use of simple, information technology-enabled processes and tools to make transitions easier and safer for patients, caregivers and providers, particularly when a patient is discharged from a hospital.  The first health IT challenge, Ensuring Safe Transitions from Hospital to Home , called upon developers to create a web-based application that could empower patients and caregivers to better navigate and manage a transition from a hospital.

This latest challenge was announced during today’s Care Innovations Summit. The Summit is co-hosted by the ONC, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the West Wireless Health Institute and Health Affairs to call attention to importance of care transitions and address the gaps in care coordination with a focus on better care and better health at a lower cost.

The scheduling of follow-up appointments and post-discharge testing before leaving the hospital helps ensure safer and more effective transitions.  Unfortunately, most patients across the country continue to leave the hospital without confirmed appointments and many providers remain frustrated by a highly manual and unreliable system.  The Discharge Follow-Up Appointment challenge will focus on promoting effective care transitions.

“This challenge is an enormous opportunity for software developers to develop solutions, and pursue models that can be adopted across a community,” said Farzad Mostashari, M.D., Sc.M., national coordinator for health information technology.  “Scheduling post-discharge follow-up appointments is critical, but not easy for patients or providers and we’re excited by the possibilities that will stem from this challenge.”

For additional information about ONC or on the i2 program, visit http://HealthIT.HHS.gov.

For more information about Health 2.0, which helps support the i2 challenge program, visit www.Health2Con.com .

For more information about Partnership for Patients, which also supports the i2 challenge program, visit http://www.healthcare.gov/compare/partnership-for-patients/index.html .

 

Summit builds on Affordable Care Act, highlights private, public innovations to improve healthcare quality and lower costs

Obama Administration officials and a breadth of representatives from across the health care system will meet in Washington today for a day-long meeting to explore how they can collaborate and improve the quality of health care while at the same time lowering costs.

The Obama Administration also released a new report today highlighting the success of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.  Created by the Affordable Care Act, the Innovation Center has already worked to test and support innovative new health care models that can reduce costs and strengthen the quality of health care.

The Care Innovations Summit, hosted jointly by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the West Wireless Health Institute, and the journal Health Affairs, will bring together over 1,000 medical professionals, health care policymakers, academics and investors to explore innovative ways to make health care both affordable and effective.

“The Affordable Care Act gives us tremendous new tools to innovate and improve our health care system,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “We’ll discuss how we can work together to make innovative ideas a reality in communities across the country.”

The summit will showcase nearly half a dozen announcements of major new initiatives by leading health care organizations.  Among these announcements are new “challenges” to reverse the trend of diabetes, advance the field of Alzheimer’s prevention and treatment, and bolster the battle against HIV/AIDS.

“The level of real excitement surrounding this conference shows not only that people who know health care recognize the urgent need for better health and better care at lower cost, they also are ready to move forward with solutions,” said CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

“The fact that all of these disparate interests share the aim of better health care and are willing to work for it not only means that we’re going to have the best ideas on the table, but also that we’re going to have the expertise and the resources that will ultimately ensure better health at a lower cost will be within the reach of every American,” said Richard J. Gilfillan, M.D., director of the Innovation Center.

 For more information, visit http://www.innovation.cms.gov/summit/.

via hhs.gov