"Direct Project" entries
The Direct Project has teeth, but it needs pseudonymity
How patient pseudonyms can inspire trust in the Direct Project's network.
Yesterday, Meaningful Use Stage 2 was released.
You can read the final rule here and you can read the announcement here.
As we read and parse the 900 or so pages of government-issued goodness, you can expect lots of commentary and discussion. Geek Doctor already has a summary and Motorcycle Guy can be expected to help us all parse the various health IT standards that have been newly blessed. Expect Brian Ahier to also be worth reading over the next couple of days.
I just wanted to highlight one thing about the newly released rules. As suspected, the actual use of the Direct Project will be a requirement. That means certified electronic health record (EHR) systems will have to implement it, and doctors and hospitals will have to exchange data with it. Awesome.
More importantly, this will be the first health IT interoperability standard with teeth. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be setting up an interoperability test server. It will not be enough to say that you support Direct. People will have to prove it. I love it. This has been the problem with Health Level 7 et al for years. No central standard for testing always means an unreliable and weak standard. Make no mistake, this is a critical and important move from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).
The state of Health Information Exchange in Massachusetts
Health IT and HIE advances in Massachusetts may lead to national shifts.
Although health information exchange should be identified as a process, having the structures and organizations to facilitate exchange is a challenge facing health care. A recent conference articulated these issues, and presented clear plans on how Massachusetts is addressing them.
Direct Project will be required in the next version of Meaningful Use
The Direct Project is poised to become the first health Internet platform.
Given the way that healthcare is financed in the U.S., it's reasonable to expect that many doctors will have a Direct email address to communicate with other doctors and their patients in a few years.
SMART challenge and P4: open source projects look toward the broader use of health records
Many of the building blocks have recently fallen into place for
seamless data exchange between a patient and multiple care
organizations to support such things as real-time interventions in
patient behavior and better clinical decision support.
Report from Massachusetts Health IT forum
About clinical effectiveness research, EHRs, and just working
together.