Sharp Focus Roundup

I've been thinking about the Strategic Health IT Advance Research Projects (SHARP) Program lately and plan to give an update soon on some of the progress being made. SHARP has four major efforts underway at major collaborative efforts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Texas at Houston, Harvard University, the Mayo Clinic of Medicine, and Massachusetts General Hospital. The websites for each of these projects are:

SHARP Area 1 – Privacy and Security: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is helping develop technologies and policy recommendations that reduce privacy and security risks and increase public trust. (my Sharp Focus post)

SHARP Area 2 – Patient Cognitive Support: Innovative cognitive research is being led by the University of Texas, Houston to harness the power of health IT to integrate and support physician reasoning and decision-making as providers care for patients. (my Sharp Focus post)

SHARP Area 3 – Health Care Application and Network Design: Harvard University is leading platform-based research to create new and improved system designs that facilitate information exchange while ensuring the accuracy, privacy, and security of electronic health information. (my Sharp Focus post)

SHARP Area 4 – Secondary Use of EHR Information: Mayo Clinic of Medicine is developing strategies to improve the overall quality of healthcare by leveraging existing EHR data to generate new, environmentally appropriate, best practice suggestions.

SHARP Affiliate – Medical Device “Plug-and-Play” Interoperability Program: Massachusetts General Hospital is developing technology, software, standards, and tools to provide higher quality patient data by enabling medical device manufacturers to create products that will interoperate with other manufacturers’ devices, EHRs, and Health IT systems.

I believe that the research being done here will be a spark for innovation that can help drive healthcare into the future. I'm looking forward to the results of this research having a real world impact soon.


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Mobile Health Whitepaper from Sprint and Frost & Sullivan

Sprint has recently sponsored a Frost & Sullivan a whitepaper, Mobile Devices and Healthcare: What’s New, What Fits, and How Do You Decide? (414K pdf), which examines the proliferation of mobile devices in healthcare. The paper looks at the strengths and drawbacks of four major mobile device types – smartphones, tablets, push-to-talk communication devices, and machine-to-machine (M2M) remote medical monitoring devices. Each device category is evaluated for application in three unique environments – the hospital, physician’s office, and the patient’s home. Criteria for selecting a mobility partner are also discussed.



“The healthcare sector has never been known for being an early adopter of information technology. However, now there are innovative, powerful mobile devices that must be recognized as absolutely key to expanding and improving patient care, to controlling costs, and to complying with regulatory mandates,” said Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst, Jeanine Sterling.

Smartphone penetration among U.S. healthcare providers continues to surge, and understandably so. As these devices have become more powerful and convenient, their assortment of medical software applications has grown. Caregivers can now use their smartphones to easily access medical reference libraries, view lab results, monitor patient vitals, and access patient electronic health records (EHR). A second device category – today’s next-generation tablets – is now taking these capabilities and magnifying their usefulness with the aid of larger screens, high-resolution displays, and dual cameras.

Even the familiar push-to-talk devices are augmenting their instant voice communications benefit with new form factors and an array of new capabilities, providing needed functionality in multiple scenarios, including the emergency room and in natural disaster situations. And, lastly, M2M remote monitoring devices are starting to bridge the geographic gap between healthcare providers and patients who find it difficult to make in-person office visits. In addition to supporting patients with chronic conditions, M2M technology is being used for personal wellness monitoring and for helping elderly or at-risk individuals to live independently. M2M is improving outcomes and cutting expense – a win-win combination of benefits that few can afford to ignore.

“Mobile technology promises to transform healthcare. It all begins with the mobile device, and vendors are working hard to tempt healthcare providers with a broad, and often bewildering, set of choices. Different types of medical staff will have different information and communications needs. We discuss the criteria to consider when selecting the optimal device(s) and mobility partner. And we offer Sprint as an example of an end-to-end mobile solution provider that has done the due diligence and assembled a top-tier portfolio of solutions and partners,” stated Sterling.

EHR Incentive Program Gaining Ground

Substantial momentum is building in the EHR Incentive Program as more and more states begin accepting registration and more providers and hospitals begin attesting to meaningful use. Robert Tagalicod, the new director of CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, and Elizabeth Holland, CMS director of health IT initiatives group, updated the HIT Policy Committee on August 3, 2011. The audio and slide deck from that portion of the meeting are below:

Meaningful Use Analysis

The report was given with the repeated caveat that these are preliminary results that should not be used to draw conclusions for policy making. However, there was some discussion of the report and as you heard above, Dr. Neil Calman, a policy committee member and CEO of the Institute for Family Health in New York, said "Once you have the capability of doing something in your system, people tend to do it much more than the thresholds we’ve set. So once you start doing e-prescribing, you can do it for everybody. I wouldn’t be surprised if these high levels are maintained as people qualify."

A new feature of the report was that the medical specialties associated with the eligible physicians and other professionals were separated. The two top specialties are family practice and internal medicine, with Cardiology a distant third place (see page 2 of report below). Twenty-one states have launched their Medicaid EHR program, with Arizona, Connecticut, Rhode Island and West Virginia in the past month according to the report. The CMS EHR Medicaid program also announced the addition of two new states that are now accepting provider registration, New Mexico and Wisconsin. These additions bring the total number of states participating in the Medicaid EHR program to 23.

The full report from CMS is below:

2011 July EHR Monthly Report

Secrets of HIE Success Revealed: Lessons from the Leaders

The National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) will release the much anticipated report, Secrets of HIE Success Revealed: Lessons from the Leaders, during a live webinar on Tuesday, August 2, 2011. The program will feature Kate Berry, CEO of NeHC, and executives from the 12 HIEs profiled in the report. You can access information on the webinar HERE.

NeHC recently hosted the HIE Leaders Roundtable to introduce the 12 HIE leaders and preview the findings of the report, Secrets of HIE Success Revealed: Lessons from the Leaders. During the event, the leaders were asked to give a brief overview of their organizations and comment on their sustainability models. The discussion also covered how the HIEs are engaging consumers and offering services to empower them to become more engaged in their care.



The report was commissioned by NeHC in order to provide in-depth studies of successful and mature HIEs in diverse geographies and market types. The report captures the key dimensions of success for HIE leadership and sustainability, provides insight and guidance for emerging HIEs, and contributes to the development of a national roadmap for health information exchange. The report aims to continue this conversation and provide a guide for emerging HIEs. In developing the report, NeHC worked with the State HIE and Beacon Community teams at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to ensure that the findings in the report would provide value and work to inform the ongoing conversation about the national roadmap for HIE to improve healthcare for all Americans.