IT folks are used to planning a project, but sometimes when we are out of our normal day to day environment we forget the basics that have helped make us successful.

I use the five most common questions to help plan my four day adventure: who, what, why, how and when.

1^st – Why Attend?

What are your goals for attending? First time attendees don’t need onerous goals but make them realistic. Examples might be: learn about 1 new vendor or product a day that will help my organization or make 2 contacts each day that I can follow-up with over the next year

2^nd – What Information will help move our Hospital forward in 2011 or 2013?

Know in advance what you think will help your organization. You will always have a pleasant surprise, but that is a bonus.

3^rd – Who will you learn from? Make sure you look through the full agenda before you go to identify who you think will have information or insights that will help both you and your organization. It could be a speaker or a vendor or a person you meet. Identify 2 or 3 speakers and 2 or 3 vendors. You may not ever purchase anything from the vendors you meet, but you will come away with ideas.

4^th – How?  – agree that when you go back to your office you will share your learnings with your peers.  To do this I suggest you

a)      Document each session or  booth on the exhibit floor you go to… take notes the old fashion way, dictate as you leave the session or take pictures on you smart phone

b)      Summarize your notes each night… the amount of information is overwhelming at times so be sure to finalize your thoughts daily. Whether it is daily notes or a PowerPoint presentation, get the information ready to share with your peers… it only takes a few minutes

c)      Make a list of ideas or people to follow-up with.

5th When? use your time efficiently and effectively. Commit to following a plan of attack for 2/3 of the day and leave 1/3 flexible each day. Plan out which major vendors you want to talk with and make an appointment to visit their booth. Plan when you want to visit them, before or after a given educational session.

For example Day 1

a)      Attend the Key note address

b)      Go to the 1^st session in the  social media series

c)      Go to 1st session in the mobility series

d)     Visit vendor X’s booth to learn about a,b and/or c

It is a great learning environment. Enjoy it!

Spring Networking Conference & Annual General Meeting Thursday June 19, 2008, 9am Registration, lunch included, wrap-up 3pm Sunnybrook Estates, Bayview Avenue, Toronto Education program:E-Strategy Agenda in Ontario – through the eyes of the clinicians

Where are we, what has to happen next, issues and challenges from the perspective of the end user

Speakers:

William Pascal, Canadian Medical Association
Dr. Jim Maclean, Canada Health Infoway
Anne Trafford, St. Michael’s Hospital
Nancy Lefebre, Saint Elizabeth Healthcare
Dr. James Lane, Family Practice IT Health Lead
Maide Yazar, Consultant Healthtech Inc.

HIMSS Members: No Charge

Non-Members: $50.00 (cash or cheque) at the door, or $0, if joining HIMSS

http://www.ontariohimss.org

“Creating a High-Performance Healing Environment—a CEO’s Perspective” by Michael H. Covert, President and CEO, Palomar Pomerado Health.

“HIMSS Analytics Survey Results” moderated by Dave Garets, FHIMSS, President and CEO, HIMSS AnalyticsTM and Executive Vice President, HIMSS, and Jennifer Horowitz, MA, FHIMSS, CPHIMS, Director, Research, HIMSS AnalyticsTM.

“eDocument Delivery with Data Leakage Prevention” by Len Chiacchia, MS, Information Security, BayCare Health Systems.

“WLAN: Design it to Make a Difference” by Mary Carroll Ford, VP, CIO, Lakeland Regional Hospital, and Ted Baker, MCSE, CCNA, Senior Account Manager, Coleman Technologies Inc.

“Health 2.0” by Matthew Holt, Healthcare Strategist, CIO, Matthew Holt Consulting.

Visit the MS-HUG Web site. Choose which presentation you want to view and click the PDF icon at the bottom of each session listing.

While the benefits of a PHR to the patient seem on the surface to be quite obvious and most of the discussion thus far of services such as Microsoft’s Health Vault have revolved around patient and consumer adoption, Jacob Goldstein turns the discussion on its head and asks “but will any doctor’s trust it”?

A very good question.

Many doctors order new tests at their own labs rather than trust, or take the time to obtain previous existing results. The adoption of an EMR is expected to reduce this pattern of duplication and administration of unnecessary tests by providing a trusted and centrally available repository of medical information. Maintained and administrated by hospitals or government agencies, doctors may at first be apprehensive of accepting data contained in the EMR, however under these circumstances one must expect that eventually adoption rates will reach a tipping point and the EMR will become a common place tool in the doctor’s day to day work flow.

When however the administrator of the PHR is a private corporation such as Microsoft or Google, and maintenance of the data is conducted by the patient, will physicians be willing and for that matter should they, rely on this information to make critical decisions regarding the care of their patients?

Steve Leiber the President and CEO of HIMSS says no:

Physicians aren’t going to trust it. Patients could show up and hand over their memory stick or a Internet address for the files, but doctors on the receiving end might be wary of believing what the records says. “It’s outside a protected chain, the second doctors are going to repeat those tests.

While he doesn’t necessarily take up the cause of the “yes” camp, John Moore at Chilmark Research has posted an excellent rebuttal to the piece noting that HIMSS is very much supported by the traditional EMR vendors and only to some degree by the new and emerging PHR vendors. Whether this has an impact or not on Mr. Leiber’s thoughts on the matter are of course relevant; however the questions he raises are worthwhile and should be asked and investigated by not only patients, doctors, but also the PHR vendors themselves.

Regardless of the immediate outcome of the debate, where such PHR services may prove initially helpful are in areas such as providing a list of allergies and other non critical medical information when a patient presents at an ER, visits a walk-in clinic or other such non routine interactions with healthcare providers. In this case the PHR would complement the EHR of the patient and may in some cases provide significant value to the attending clinician.

References:

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog
How Personal Health Records Could Make Care Less Efficient

Chilmark Research
HIMSS Leader Raises Doubts on PHRs

Here are a few examples that I have come across and found helpful in shaping my thinking:

Frost and Sullivan provide the following definitation of the PHR in their research entitled Opportunity and Trends in the U.S. Personal Health Records Markets.

Personal health record (PHR) – An electronic, universally available, lifelong resource of health information needed by individuals to make health decisions. Individuals own and manage the information in the PHR, which comes from health care providers and the individual. The PHR is maintained in a secure and private environment, with the individual determining rights of access. The PHR is separate from and does not replace the legal record of any provider.

HIMSS defines an ePHR as in a paper entitled HIMSS Personal Health Records Definition and Position Statement as follows:

An electronic Personal Health Record (“ePHR”) is a universally accessible, layperson comprehensible, lifelong tool for managing relevant health information, promoting health maintenance and assisting with chronic disease management via an interactive, common data set of electronic health information and e-health tools. The ePHR is owned, managed, and shared by the individual or his or her legal proxy(s) and must be secure to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the health information it contains. It is not a legal record unless so defined and is subject to various legal limitations.

Wikipedia’s entry on Personal Health Record is:

A personal health record or PHR is typically a health record that is initiated and maintained by an individual. An ideal PHR would provide a complete and accurate summary of the health and medical history of an individual by gathering data from many sources and making this information accessible online to anyone who has the necessary electronic credentials to view the information.

The new line up includes:

Microsoft Amalga which is the new brand for Azyxxi. Amalga is the Unified Intelligence System offering which will allow hospitals to apply business intelligence like tools to clinical, financial and administrative systems.

Microsoft Amalga Hospital Information System is the new version of the Hospital 2000 product. It has been fully updated to include an integrated HIS system with an EMR, bed management, laboratory, pharmacy, RIS, PACS, pathology, accounting, materials management and HR systems.

Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS is the new versions of GCS Amalga which is the RIS/PACs system built into the HIS system, but in a version that can be purchased separately.

Reference Links:

Microsoft Amalga – website

The Healthcare IT Blog – Microsoft Amalga Family Announced Today