John Moehrke, Principal Engineer: Interoperability and Security, GE Healthcare, writes:
The IHE IT Infrastructure domain has released for public comment their 2007-2008 profiles and white papers. This comment period closes July 13th. ...Please feel free to comment to IHE.
You can find them at the IHE web site.
here. <ed.note>Note: Sec. 403. Facilitating the Provision of Telehealth Services Across State Lines</ed.note>
Continue reading "Can Medical Banking Connect the Healthcare IT Dots for Politicians?" »
Ron Schuldt writes:
For those who have not read the President’s Health Information Technology Plan, I recommend that you see the following
I offer the following based on my assumption that an individual’s electronic health record will include topics such as:
Electronic Health Record Information (identification)
Patient Information (identification, address, phone number, date of birth, gender)
Primary Care Doctor Information (identification, address, phone number)
Insurance Coverage Information (identification, address, phone number)
Medical Conditions (identification and time period)
Medical Treatment Process (identification and time period)
Medical Treatment Substances (identification and time period)
Assuming the above topics and probably others are expected to be an integral part of an individual’s electronic health record, I offer the following UDEF names and IDs for each topic. Note: Proposed UDEF extensions are in italics
DAY 1, Tuesday, February 13, 2007
7:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.: Conference Registration
7:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.: Continental Breakfast
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.: Welcome Presentation & Conference Overview
Dan Kazzaz, ASC X12 Chair
Jim Whicker, WEDI Chair
9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.: Current State of Batch Claim Processing
J Robert Barbour, VP Finance for MD Services & Tech Development, Montefiore
Medical Center
Rick Click, CIO, Molina Healthcare
Brian Cutler, President, Mercury Data Exchange
10:15 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.: Networking Break
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Spurring Healthcare into “Real-Time” Through
Collaboration
Jim Lacy, CFO & General Counsel, ZirMed
Fran Watkins, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
Kenneth Willman, Director of Provider Interface, Humana
Ginger Wright, HIPAA Compliance Manager, The Availity Health Information
Network
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Conference Luncheon
1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.: Roadblocks to Real-Time Adjudication
Lynne Gilbertson, Director of Standards Development, NCPDP
Gwendolyn Lohse, Project Director, CAQH
Maggie Ohara or Tara Mondock, IVANS
Fred Richards, CTO, HTP, Inc.
2:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.: Really Real Time Implementations of Real-Time Adjudication
David Boucher, AVP of Healthcare Service, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina
Allen DeGraw, Founder & CEO, Post-N-Track Corporation
Barnet Dreistadt, Director, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
Amy Hinrichs, Director, Provider Portal, UnitedHealthGroup
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Networking Break
Continue reading "ASC X12 WEDI Real-Time Adjudication Conference – Schedule Overview" »
I’m pleased to announce that a new case study was posted at the ebXML.org Web site:
http://www.ebxml.org/case_studies/NHS-ebMSG-casestudy-041206.pdf
The UK's National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) is the world's largest civil IT project. A central component of the NHS Care Records Service is the Transactional Messaging Service (TMS) Spine using the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard.
The Transaction and Messaging Service provides the communications infrastructure for the National Programme. It serves to interconnect regional network clusters managed by Local Service Providers (LSPs) and national services such as systems for electronic booking and transmission of prescriptions. The technology framework used for TMS is based on a large number of advanced technical specifications and standards. This includes the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard. Within the TMS Spine, ebXML is used to provide reliable messaging functionality. National services such as the Electronic Booking Service (Choose and Book) and Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions are accessed using pairs of XML request and response documents. These documents are transported within the NHS network as ebXML messages.
With an anticipated yearly volume of over 5.000.000.000 message by 2010, TMS is likely to be among the largest messaging systems in production in the world. For this very reason, TMS is also likely to be among the larger systems worldwide that will use the ebXML Messaging OASIS Standard.
Sincere congratulations to everyone involved in this very significant project!
Pim van der Eijk
# # # #
David Webber adds at ebxml forum news:
In 2004 the UK National Health Service NHS adopted ebXML messaging for its mission critical Transactional Messaging Services (TMS) Spine. Anticipated annual message volume by 2010 is over 5,000,000,000 for managing healthcare in the UK from all sources - email, smartcard payments and ebXML.
At the OASIS Adoption Forum in London in November, 2006 the key-note presentation by Dr. Mark Ferrar, Director of Infrastructure, NHS Connecting for Health reported that the 'Choose and Book' system is now generating upward of 16,000 transactions daily with over 1.7 million generated so far this year.
The ebXML messaging is a foundation service as part of the SPINE architecture. Dr. Ferrar gives comprehensive details of the scale of the technology that NHS is implementing and the scope involving already 98% of doctors offices in the UK.
Everyone, The ebBP v2.0.4 vote for OASIS Standard vote began 16 November (vote: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ballot.php?id=1150) and continues to 30 November 2006. The response thus far has been favorable. In support of business collaboration, ebBP is a valuable addition to the OASIS Standard specification set and to the marketplace. We encourage those that work with OASIS or have voting organizational members to cast their affirmative ballot by 30 November 2006 and to enable the next step to promote to ISO-15000 standard. For those of you that have voted or encouraged your community to do so, we appreciate the support. For others, we trust you will pass along this information on our behalf.
The ebBP (ebXML Business Process Specification Schema) is a business collaboration process standard useful for monitoring rather than an executable language. The ebBP enables the collaborative or eBusiness processes relevant to trading partners across enterprises or collaborating parties. It could also map to WS-BPEL that engage processes within an enterprise.As a business collaboration definition targeted specifically for and developed by business communities, ebBP is well-positioned for eBusiness. For example, our TC has worked with user communities in Italy, the Netherlands, Asia, and the United Kingdom on sample or actual real-world process definitions. We've also worked with Universal Business Language (UBL) to create modular process definitions that support that OASIS standard and ebBP.
The permanent locations for the v2.04 packages are found at: http://docs.oasis-open.org/ebxml-bp/2.0.4/. The public web site is located at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ebxml-bp.
ebBP is also in the news:
1. METU has provided an updated ebBP Editor Tool. See: http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=154705. Their cumulative efforts are important to eHealth and to the domain of businessprocess in general. Congratulations to METU!
2. We've now posted sample Japanese process definitions from JEITA. See: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/20133/ecom-jeita-ebbp-samples-definitions-aug2006.zip.
3. ebBP and the framework ebXML technologies were recently featured at Linux World. Stay tuned for more information.
4. More is to come too from Object Management Group as ebBP has contributed to their work on Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). The experience around and requirements for choreography and business collaboration from ebBP experts has positively received by those groups. As their work evolves, so will the functionality to support our primary areas of interest.
All referenced information and more is available on our public web site that includes:
The ebBP TC would greatly appreciate your support and vote for advancing ebBP to OASIS Standard.
Regards.
Dale Moberg, US Axway
Monica J. Martin, Sun Microsystems
[for the OASIS ebXML Business Process TC (ebBP)]
Presentations available online here.
NIST Administration Building, Gaithersburg, MD
Keynote Address:
Michael O. Leavitt (confirmed)
Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Carlos M. Gutierrez (invited)
Secretary, U.S. Department of Commerce
Craig R. Barrett (confirmed)
Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation
Just Announced...
Keynote Address (Day Two):
Mike Magee, MD, Director, Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative and Vice President, Science and Medical Advocacy, Pfizer Inc. (confirmed)
This is a unique opportunity where government and industry will come together to chart a path toward a far-reaching vision for connected, home-based health technologies through public-private partnerships.
Five session topics will cover today's interoperability issues, such as:
Register Today!
Register online now. The registration fee is $195 and includes meals, summit materials, and transportation to and from the NIST facilities to the Gaithersburg Holiday Inn.
Hotel and Travel
Reserve a hotel room at the Gaithersburg Holiday Inn. A limited number of rooms are available for the rate of $104 per night. Book online or call (301) 948-8900 to make your reservation . Please refer to the "NIST/Moving Toward Interoperability Workshop" room block. The group booking code is MTI.
Posters and Case Studies
Interact with researchers at universities, companies and government on technologies to support our aging population during our poster networking session.
Questions?
Contact Rebecca Scritchfield
E-mail: rscritchfield@agingtech.org
Tel: (202) 508-9416
Official Event Web site: http://www.itl.nist.gov/Healthcare%20Summit/intro.htm
Who Should Attend
Technology Researchers and Developers
Healthcare and Aging Services Providers
Government Agency Representatives
Healthcare Product Vendors
Company Executives
Standards Development Organizations
Associations
Consumer Organizations
Companies, government, and consumers are developing partnerships to address the challenges of the coming "age wave". Through the application of consumer-directed technologies, opportunities exist to empower individuals to take charge of their own health care and maintain independence.
To achieve this vision, our country must advance the development of new technologies and ensure the interoperability of these devices. To help explore the best way to enable the vision of connected home-based health delivery, Center for Aging Services Technologies, the Department of Commerce's Technology Administration and National Institute of Standards and Technology have come together as partners to host a National Summit to identify issues around the needs and challenges to make interoperability a reality. Recommendations from the Summit will drive needed public and private sector action.
Co-Sponsored by:
Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST)
U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology Administration (TA)
For more information about this Summit, visit the official website at http://www.itl.nist.gov/Healthcare%20Summit/intro.htm
March 29, 2005 By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, InformationWeek
Three Massachusetts communities have been chosen as pilot sites for an electronic-health-record project that could serve as the model for statewide adoption of digitized medical-record systems.
... Within each community, health-care providers--including acute-care hospitals or group hospitals, physician practices, long-term care facilities, nursing and home health-care agencies, and community health centers--will implement interoperable E-health records systems.
The last two decades have seen considerable efforts directed towards making electronic health records interoperable through improvements in medical ontologies, terminologies and coding systems. Unfortunately, these efforts have been hampered by a number of influential ideas inherited from the work of Eugen Wüster, the father of terminology standardization and the founder of ISO TC 37. We here survey Wüster’s ideas – which see terminology work as being focused on the classification of concepts in people’s minds – and we argue that they serve still as the basis for a series of influential confusions. We argue further that an ontology based unambiguously, not on concepts, but on the classification of entities in reality can, by removing these confusions, make a vital contribution to ensuring the interoperability of coding systems and healthcare records in the future.
Per Monica Martin ( of SUN and OASIS ebXML Business Process TC Co-Chair ) :
With many thanks to Dr. Asuman Dogac and her METU team ( the RIDE Project ) for this valuable work, the new ebBP editor is now available on Source Forge. More details on the user guide and other pertinent information is posted on our web site.
Using ebBP v2.0.x, the editor integrates additional error handling and compositional functionality. Our ( OASIS ) public web site also shows screen shots from our August 2006 demonstration. It is anticipated and work is ongoing to link this work with other public domain tools to support eHealth through the Integrated Health Enterprise (IHE). I encourage interested parties to go out to see the tool, visit also the METU site and provide comments and suggestions to this worthwhile effort. Thank you.
RIDE is a roadmap project for interoperability of eHealth systems leading to recommendations for actions and to preparatory actions at the European level. This roadmap will prepare the ground for future actions as envisioned in the action plan of the eHealth Communication COM 356 by coordinating various efforts on eHealth interoperability in member states and the associated states. Since it is not realistic to expect to have a single universally accepted clinical data model that will be adhered to all over the Europe and that the clinical practice, terminology systems and EHR systems are all a long way from such a complete harmonization; the RIDE project will address the interoperability of eHealth systems with special emphasis on semantic interoperability.
In order to create RIDE Roadmap, first the European best practices in providing semantic interoperability for eHealth domain will be assessed and the quantified requirements to create a valid roadmap will be identified. Based on these requirements, the goals, and the economical, legal, financial and technological challenges of the industry for the 21st century for achieving interoperability in eHealth solutions will be elaborated. RIDE will also focus on the limitations of the policies and strategies currently used in deploying interoperable eHealth solutions.
A research portal for sharing resources addressing semantic interoperability in eHealth domain will be created and maintained; the key actors and stakeholders will be coordinated around RIDE special interest groups to create a wide consensus at the European level. Through eight RIDE workshops a shared vision for building a Europe-wide semantically interoperable eHealth infrastructure will be created. After assessing the gaps between the 'as-is' situation and the 'to-be' eHealth vision, the emerging trends and opportunities to achieve the vision statement, the required advances in the state of the art research, technology and standards will be identified.
More here
The Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) Project is an open source project whose aim is to build an e-health computing platform (tools, run-times and community) on which developers can more effectively build useful and interoperable applications.
Eclipse is widely known as a tools IDE, or even just a Java development environment. But Eclipse is more than this. Eclipse is a community with a strong open source governance model that develops tools which have strong reuse of the knowledge code for run-time use by developers.
We believe that the openEHR community could leverage the Eclipse platform - the tooling, run-time and governance support, to improve the coherence of the the tools, implementations and uptake of openEHR.
OHF will propose an openEHR component at the European EclipseCon meeting. We have an OHF FTF meeting in Stuttgart on Oct 13th, where the project will be proposed for formal adoption as an OHF component.
I am currently working with Tom Beale to clarify the scope of the proposal, and how it relates to an overall tooling roadmap for openEHR. This notice is an invitation to come to the Stuttgart meeting and have your say, or to work with Tom and I on the proposal in advance.
Grahame Grieve - grahame at kestral.com.au
EclipseCon: http://www.eclipsecon.org/summiteurope2006/
Stuttgart Meeting announcement: http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/article.php?id=216&group=eclipse.technology.ohf#216
Eclipse OHF: http://www.eclipse.org/ohf
Eclipse OHF newsgroup access: http://www.eclipse.org/newsgroups/register.php
[ An introduction to the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement standard ]
By Leo Fernandez, Ash Parikh, Varun Gupta, Javaworld.com
This article is part of a series of short articles that introduce readers to the industry's various Web services standards. These articles provide a quick introduction to these standards, their backgrounds, underlying architectures, benefits, status, and industry adoption. As some of the content may be a depiction of the authors' viewpoints, readers are encouraged to refer to the links provided in Resources to gain a deeper understanding of a particular standard. This article focuses on Web services-enabled trading-partner collaboration standards that influence a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
CHICAGO, Ill. and ANN ARBOR, Mich. - August 1, 2006 – The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and Internet2 announced today that the two organizations have created a partnership to explore the development of a secure, reliable and advanced networking solution for the transmission of medical information, messages and images throughout the broad healthcare industry.
The two organizations are exploring a new network designed to offer the health sciences and healthcare sectors a private and secure medium for exchanging health information. A next-generation architecture built to meet federal regulatory requirements, this new network may also have value to offer in the work of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).
This ground-breaking collaboration is a natural extension for both not-for-profit organizations. Through a membership of 20,000 individuals, 45 chapters, and more than 300 corporations representing millions of employees, the HIMSS mission focuses on the betterment of healthcare through the most effective use of information technology and management systems. Internet2, the U.S. ’s advanced networking consortium led by 208 U.S. university members in partnership with over 100 industry and government members, works to develop and deploy advanced networks, applications and resources.
“HIMSS and our members look forward to this collaboration with Internet2,” said H. Stephen Lieber, HIMSS president/CEO. “The synergies between HIMSS and Internet2 brought our organizations together to consider and evaluate the feasibility of establishing a network that would meet the evolving needs of the biomedical and healthcare delivery community.”
Since 1999, Internet2 has operated an advanced nationwide network that supports leading-edge Internet technology development for the research and academic community. Internet2 recently announced a major upgrade to this network to provide members 10 times the capacity and speed of its current infrastructure. In addition, the Internet2 community has successfully developed important middleware technologies to address critical issues in authentication and authorization in order to enable active privacy management. Through this partnership, HIMSS and the Internet2 community will work closely together to leverage these leading-edge technologies to explore development of brand new capabilities that meet the specific security and privacy needs of the healthcare industry.
“The research and education community has long understood the potential for leveraging advanced Internet technology to enhance the healthcare industry’s ability to serve the public’s needs, to improve the flow of information for research, to streamline care processes and to enable cost savings,” said Douglas Van Houweling, Internet2 president and CEO. “Our partnership with the HIMSS community is a major step forward in realizing this vision. Together we will work to create a new state-of-the-art platform for biomedical research, education and clinical practice on a national scale.”
Through the partnership, four working groups have been established to explore the requirements and capabilities needed to create an advanced medical network during the next year. HIMSS and Internet2 will join each other’s organizations. Members of both organizations will also join each of the four working groups, which include:
In addition, members of both organizations will work for the development and implementation of the network with other partnerships and collaborations, including Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE).
The Medical Banking Report, July|August Vol. 3, No. 4
As ONCHIT seeks to harmonize standards, technology and architecture to create an electronic health records system, another effort suddenly finds itself in the landscape of the possible for implementing our “medical internet”.
While related to the work of the Medical Banking Project, the new “Independent Health Record Bank” (IHRB) is far different. Yet the profile of IHRBs in medical banking was signficantly raised when a new House bill seeking to establish IHRBs appointed the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) as the governance agency.
Because IHRBs can emerge external to existing banking infrastructure, MBProject doesn’t classify it as a pure medical banking play. Core to medical banking is leveraging existing banking systems for healthcare. Yet if IHRBs gain traction banks will likely get much more involved, especially if the FRB is involved.
“Yes, the IHRB can be implemented outside of banks but it can also work within the banking community,” insists Amnon Shabo, PhD., in an email to MBR. Shabo, who did early work in creating the IHRB model, works at IBM’s Almaden Institute in Haifa, Israel. Yet offering the new service could present challenges to banks. The proposed “Independent Health Record Bank Act of 2006” suggests that IHRBs are non-profit entities only, and that they are right off the bat, a HIPAA clearinghouse.
Room 310 - Healthcare Day Wiki
Join us at the Linux World Conference & Expo first ever Healthcare Day and become part of the force that is re-shaping the healthcare IT landscape.
Learn from industry peers about the issues and driving forces behind the growing use of open solutions throughout healthcare. OSDL has created a compelling program that will provide essential information on how Open Source Software and Open Standards are being developed and deployed by innovators throughout the healthcare industry.
Healthcare Day will:
Enable developers and integrators with experience in developing/porting/integrating applications for the Open Source platform to share, learn, and/or begin the process.
Develop a community of health IT organizations, to collaborate, learn, and collectively promote Open Source solutions and standards.
The agenda includes real world application demos, deployment case studies, interactive discussions and a close up look into the emerging revolution of open solutions and standards for the next generation of healthcare.
Healthcare Day Agenda
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Keynote Presentation – Open Source and Healthcare
Dr. Kenneth Kizer, CEO, Medsphere
11:00 a.m. to Noon
Linux, Open Source and Open Standards – A Positive Disruption for Healthcare
Joe Alexander, Director, Strategy and Planning, Bull
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Opening up Healthcare Markets with Open Source
Bernard Golden, Navica – Moderator
Agfa, HP, Medsphere, Free Open Source Solutions
2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.
Innovation in Healthcare with Open Source – Who is Doing What ?
Fred Trotter, Linuxmednews.com – Moderator
Agfa, Eclipse, IBM, Intel, McKesson, Open Sourcery
3:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Coffee Break
3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Building a Global Healthcare Open Source Community
Joe Alexander, Bull - Moderator
Eclipse, IBM, Medsphere, McKesson, Open Sourcery
Posted by Fred Trotter on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @ 04:40 PM from the MirrorMed dept. of Linuxmednews.comOver the past few weeks SynSeer (the sponsoring company for MirrorMed) has been going back and forth with IBM regarding the new Eclipse OHF project. This work started with the release the OHF bridge and has culminated in the integration of MirrorMed and Eclipse OHF. Thanks to Ivan and everyone at the IBM team for the help getting the code working!!
Mirth 1.0 on July 18th, 2006.
The goal of the Mirth Project is to develop Mirth, an open source cross-platform HL7 interface engine that enables bi-directional sending of HL7 messages between systems and applications over multiple transports.
By utilizing an enterprise service bus framework and a channel-based architecture, Mirth allows messages to be filtered, transformed, and routed based on user-defined rules.
Creating HL7 interfaces for existing systems becomes easy using the administrative interface and channel creation wizard which associates destinations with Mirth channels.
We have a PowerPoint presentation avaialble for more information on the Mirth Project development goals and architecture. More here.
We are actively working within OASIS and with other interested user communities in Asia, United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands to gain the implementation certifications to advance to OASIS Standard and hopefully to ISO to complete the ISO-15000 series (mentioned in OASIS Symposium last week). We'd welcome your support in this regard.
We've consolidated a wealth of information relevant to our user communities at our public web site at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ebxml-bp v2.0.3 Packages and, if desired, individual schema files, see "Technical Work Produced by the Committee."
ebBP is also in the news:
Both presentations are available at the public web site provided. Also, check out web site:
Note, the UBL Small Business Subset v1.0 is now an OASIS Committee Specification and includes a set of ebBP v2.0.3 modular process definitions, called Universal Business Processes.
As we've said before (and will say again politely), our focus on user communities is paying off - one example being the interest in the UBL community - and we now have achieved Committee Specification. We're interested in those that are developing their own process definitions and can show their successful use of ebBP. We encourage you to check out our public web site and keep abreast of our progress made thus far. For those using or interested in using ebBP, please contact Dale Moberg and myself (particularly if you are an OASIS member!). Best regards.
Respectfully,
Dale Moberg, <dmoberg @ us.axway.com>
Monica J. Martin, monica.martin @ sun.com
and the ebBP team
Purpose:
The purpose of the Nationwide Health Information Network Forum is to identify and catalogue the list of functional requirements that will frame the development of a Nationwide Health Information Network.
In the design of network systems, functional requirements are brief, verifiable, declarative statements of what a system and its components must do or the actions they must take (i.e., locate, transmit, retrieve, etc). The NHIN functional requirements will define the behaviors of systems, services, and networks that wish to participate in a Nationwide Health Information Network. The statement “the Record Locater shall return pointers that enable retrieval of patient records from data sources and repositories” is an illustration of the type of statement that could be considered a NHIN functional requirement.
While other processes continue to explore the policy determinants for nationwide health information exchange, the development of functional requirements will focus on the critical technical components of architectures to support a Nationwide Health Information Network.
The identification of functional requirements will lead to the foundational specifications of the next phase of Nationwide Health Information Network development. In addition, the functional requirements will provide a framework for the Health Information Technology Standards Panel's efforts to define implementation level guidance in their interoperability specifications, and input for the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology's compliance certification criteria that address the infrastructure or network components through which EHRs interoperate.
Overview:
As a key element of the Administration's health information technology strategy, the development of a Nationwide Health Information Network will provide the foundation for an interoperable, standards-based network for the secure exchange of health care information.
On June 28 and June 29, 2006, a forum to address the functional requirements of a Nationwide Health Information Network will be held. The Nationwide Health Information Network Forum will be open to the public and include participants in key processes supported by the Office for the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (including the four consortia developing prototype Nationwide Health Information Network architectures, the Health Information Technology Standards Panel, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, and the Federal Health Architecture) and key representatives from other public, private, and non-profit health information technology stakeholders.
The Nationwide Health Information Network Forum will be structured as an interactive discussion with facilitated breakout sessions to illuminate the technical components of a Nationwide Health Information Network.
More details here.
June 16, 2006 by Rob Roberts, Staff Writer, Kansas City Business Journal
Legislation introduced by two members of Kansas' congressional delegation is sparking debate about who should become the bankers of Americans' electronic health records -- financial institutions or independent health record banks.
U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican, introduced the Independent Health Record Bank Act on June 6. U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, a Democrat, filed a nearly identical House version two days later.
The bills call for independent health record banks to be formed by nonprofit cooperatives that, for a fee, would maintain members' lifetime electronic health records and make them accessible through swipe cards.
Some sources, however, say it makes more sense to build a nationwide health information network on top of the banking industry's existing financial infrastructure.
"We're advancing a model that is much more bank-centric than the independent health record bank model," said John Casillas, executive director of a Franklin, Tenn., think tank called the Medical Banking Project.
Casillas said the financial industry is positioned to roll out health record banking quicker and less expensively due to its nationwide electronic networks, 55 million online customers and existing accounts with health care providers and insurers.
Banks that provide services such as cash disbursement for health plans or lockbox check-processing for health care providers already must be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
"So the next step is: What services can banks add onto these HIPAA-compliant platforms we're building?" Casillas said.
The Medical Banking Project, which plans to launch a demonstration pilot next year, envisions a day when bank-issued swipe cards will allow health care providers to verify insurance coverage, receive payment from patients' bank accounts and access their electronic health records.
Integration languages make B2B communication more effective
April 7, 2005 By Johanna Ambrosio, SearchCIO.com
... Granted, it's early going, according to experts, and adopting these kinds of communications protocols is anything but a quick-and-dirty kind of project. It can take years for systems to be built and for customers and partners to be brought fully into the loop.
But that's not stopping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The federal watchdog organization over flu, hepatitis and other health threats has based the messaging portion of its new Public Health Information Network (PHIN) on ebXML. The protocol will act as the standard means for exchanging messages among all 50 states and the CDC. Other users -- including clinical facilities and medical laboratories around the country -- will be brought in as well, said Barry Rhodes, associate director for public health systems development.
At this point, PHIN has been implemented in about 15 state health departments, with the rest to be rolled out over the next three years, Rhodes said. PHIN, based on a bevy of computing and other standards, is about the secure and reliable exchange of information. It's envisioned to be a unifying framework built on top of existing standards whenever possible; for instance, Secure Sockets Layer and some Java technologies are included in the system as well.
For its part, ebXML is "the envelope into which we put messages," Rhodes explained. "Some are XML messages and some are not."
The CDC chose ebXML as the underlying message transport because it liked its approach. "The developers of ebXML looked at the business need of interactions between business partners, of how that could happen." Rhodes said. "We needed that business process modeling perspective that ebXML provides. [In comparison,] Web services tools take a bottoms-up approach -- that approach is more of a solution to a technical issue, of how to distribute functionality across servers and the Internet."
So far, ebXML at the CDC has been a "success story," because it has allowed much greater interoperability than what previously occurred among the states, Rhodes said. "Our ROI is about communication and getting more information to and from the CDC."
Rhodes was not able to share specific data, but he talked about one application -- in operation for years -- that gathers information about notifiable public health threats, including E. coli bacteria and the chickenpox.
"We look at the data and analyze it for things like latency and the amount of data received -- and we have compared those to what was happening pre-PHIN," Rhodes explained. "We've seen a demonstrable increase in the amount of data and a decrease in information latency."
The biggest threat to ebXML adoption, he said, is that it's early enough in the technology's lifecycle that it's not yet a sure bet that all the major computing vendors will support it. "It's one thing to put forth a standard," he said, "but if Microsoft and IBM choose not to implement it, that makes it very difficult. Predicting the future is a hard thing." ...
By The OASIS Business Process TC (Dale Moberg and Monica J. Martin, co-chairs) For OASIS
Business processes are key components to enable and drive collaborating partner relationships for electronic business (eBusiness). The ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS or ebBP) provides capabilities drive those eBusiness collaborative processes. As a part of the original eBusiness eXtensible Markup Language (XML) [ebXML] framework of specifications, the ebBP is targeted for monitoring of collaborative business processes among parties or business partners.
The ebBP (ebXML Business Process Specification Schema) defines a standard language to configure business systems for business collaboration execution between collaborating parties or business partners. It provides:
In the second quarter 2006, the OASIS ebBP v2.0.3 set of packages are moving towards OASIS standard. The changes and capabilities defined in the v2.0.x packages have substantially increased the business value-add for using standard process definitions. These definitions support tailoring of eBusiness processes and business documents to serve our user community.
The ebBP focuses on an integrated eBusiness adaptable approach in order to support heterogeneous environments, particularly Small- to Medium-Enterprises. As with other specifications and capabilities, ebBP can be leveraged other ebXML and/or emerging web services technologies.
It is the ‘community at large’ that has emboldened the development of ebBP and likely will drive its adoption.
April 17, Nancy Ferris, govhealthit.com
When it comes to using health information technology, rural communities face many difficulties, including common ones such as figuring out how to pay for the systems and how to set up patient information exchanges.
But some rural areas have another tough problem. They can’t get affordable high-speed communications services.
When limited to dial-up connections, doctors, hospital workers and clinicians must spend minutes to accomplish transactions that high-speed Internet users can do in seconds, such as downloading a PDF or sending a photograph. Although medical records are not necessarily enormous files, most cannot easily transmit at slow data speeds. Sending radiological images and other graphic files is out of the question.
A 2005 Institute of Medicine report notes the lack of broadband in rural areas. “This aspect of the digital divide is one of the greatest challenges for rural telehealth, as well as other rural commerce,” the report states.
With slow Internet connections, simple tasks can be hard to execute. Gail Bellamy, director of community studies at the West Virginia Institute for Health Policy Research in Charleston, W.Va., cited the example of a federally funded project in which West Virginia hospitals report medical errors.
The hospitals receive reports that show their error rates compared with those from other hospitals. When the project started, one hospital could not use the Web-based reporting screen because of its slow dial-up connection, and no T1 line or DSL service was available in that area. Project leaders appealed to Verizon, the local phone company, and persuaded the company to install a high-speed line, Bellamy said.
“Broadband is a huge issue,” she said, although it’s not a problem in every rural area. “Different parts of rural America have differential access,” and the cost of high-speed service varies.
Bellamy led a National Rural Health Association team that drafted an issue paper on health IT. It states that “simple access to the Internet is not sufficient for secure health care transactions” because of the need for security at every point along the transmission path. And a single high-speed line is not enough because redundancy is necessary to avert an unacceptable communications breakdown.
“In addition, the technology infrastructure needs to support telehealth applications, as these are critical to rural health systems,” the association’s paper states. “For example, the infrastructure must be able to accommodate regional Picture Archiving and Communications Systems [used in radiology], streaming videos and telehealth educational programs that can be broadcast from anywhere in the country.”
April 3, 2006 Nashville Business Journal
Gov. Phil Bredesen has signed an executive order establishing an e-health advisory council to coordinate Tennessee's various initiatives leading toward the adoption of an electronic medical record.
The Governor's eHealth Advisory Council will encompass 16 members from various stakeholding interests, including employers, regional health information organizations, payers and consumer groups. Chairing the body will be Antoine Agassi, a former chief technology officer at Spheris and chief information officer for WebMD.
The council will advise state government on promoting the successful adoption of EMR's. Electronic medical records are viewed as a way to improve care by collecting a patient's updated health data and eliminate waste by cutting out the need for repeated tests. President Bush has made a goal of nationwide EMR adoption during the next decade.
Posted by David Webber at ebforum news and ebxmlforum.net
The Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) Project is using the IHE/XDS secure document server developed by NIST using the ebXML Registry OMAR open source implementation - (http://www.freebxml.org).
At the recent IHE connectathon and HIMSS showcase the OHF team demonstrated a full XDS system, end to end. The XDS system includes XDS Registry, Repository, PIX server, ATNA, and all related clients - Document Consumer, Source, PIX/PDQ, CT. and ATNA.
The project includes collaboration between IBM, BEA, Mayo Clinic, Cisco Systems and other clinical participants.
For more information on the project see the website: http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/
Webswell Inc. released a new version of Webswell Connect, the
open-source ebXML integration platform. Webswell Connect 1.4.1 constitutes a comprehensive ebXML integration platform
that supports http, https and email communication while keeping it safe and
reliable implementing digital signatures, encryption, acknowledgments mechanism,
duplication elimination etc. Webswell
Connect 1.4.1 contains the most recent versions of its components: Webswell Broker (ebXML message broker) and Hermes 1 (ebXML message service
handler). The whole platform is production quality and has been implemented in business
cases where it has been proving its interoperability with other integration
platforms on the market. Webswell Connect 1.4.1 is entirely open source software
distributed under Academic Free License. Download here.
The Webswell Connect 1.4.1 contains:
About Webswell:
Webswell Inc. is a Sacramento, California based integration
company specialized in building ebXML and Web Services integration solutions and
providing related consultancy. Webswells mission is to help companies of any
size to build business integration solutions and exploit benefits that such
integration provides. All Webswell software is based on open, non-proprietary
standards and is open-source licensed.
Norway's National Insurance Administration (NIA) upgraded the EDI-based communications infrastructure it used to connect to its business partners with a new architecture based on open standards, including the ebXML Messaging OASIS Standard, ISO 15000-2. NIA's ebXML Message service was built using the Xenos terminalONE end-to-end, transaction gateway solution. To date, NIA's system is in production with four applications, and has transported several million ebXML messages corresponding to transactions totaling more than 10 billion Norwegian Kroner (equivalent to 1.2 billion EURO, or 1.5 billion USD).
This project is described in a new OASIS case study(*), available from:
http://www.oasis-open.org/casestudies/
Kind regards,
Pim van der Eijk
(*) I get some PDF errors when viewing the document; I'm told an updated version is to be published shortly.
Ash Parikh* wrote recently
...Just wanted to inform you that the press release on the Plug-In is now live and the respective download page on our website is in place, fully tested and ready for download requests.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060302/lath057.html?.v=47
http://www.rainingdata.com/products/TLSunPlugin/index.html
http://www.rainingdata.com/products/TLSunPlugin/signup/index.html
Cheers!
*Director of Development and Technology, EAG
Raining Data Corporation (NASDAQ: RDTA)
"Technology for Innovative Solutions"
www.rainingdata.com
+1 (510) 673-2922 - Office
+1 (510) 372-0432 - eFax
ash@rainingdata.com - Email
Co-Chair: SDForum Web services SIG
Founding Member: OASIS SOA Blueprints TC
Co-Chair: W2COG Technical Advisory and Oversight Committee
Member: OASIS, JCP, W3C, EPCGlobal, Supply-Chain Council, BPM Institute
Founder and President: World Wide Institute of Software Architects
Product Advisory Board Member: Iopsis Software, WindSpirng
One of the main areas of exploration in NHIN interoperability centers around the HIMSS Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) – Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) initiative. Dr. Ausman Dogac explains the interesection of XDS, ebXML Registry, Semantics and eHealth here ( ppt ) and here ( mp3 ). Ontolog Forum info here.
Franklin, TN (February 21, 2006) -- The Medical Banking Project joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Associate Member to build out its C.O.M.B.A.T. reference architecture using the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF). The OHF is the reference implementation platform for the Healthcare Services Specifications Project, supported by Health Level Seven (HL7) and the Object Management Group (OMG). MBProject will architect and build out medical banking functions using the platform.
"Eclipse offers a world class platform with a solid user base," said John Casillas, founder of MBProject. MBProject is focused on combating rising costs in healthcare by enabling banks to link consumers, providers, health plans, RHIOs, employers and others. The Eclipse OHF will reduce the time necessary to build a reference implementation for this purpose." The effort includes new 'mbXML' profiles that banks could use to do things like present personal healthcare records via online portals or support real time settlement of claims.
"Eclipse is an excellent open source environment," said John Hardin, CIO of Kentucky-based MAPHIN.net and Chair of the Planning and Design Subcommittee for MBProject. "We are monitoring all of the standards harmonization mechanisms in the marketplace while linking our project to a state-of-the-art platform."
"We are looking forward to working with the Medical Banking Project. They have extensive knowledge and experience in healthcare, financial organizations and large employers," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation. He was referring to organizations like Disney, ABAN AMRO, PNC Bank, Mellon, Wachovia, US Bank, Fiserv, United Healthcare and many others who have joined MBProject.
"Eclipse OHF is active in HSSP and will ensure that the standards we produce are not shelfware," said Ken Rubin, one of the co-chairs of the HSSP effort. "Commitments to these open solutions, such as the Medical Banking Project is making, are essential if the healthcare industry is going to realize the vision of reliable, secure, open interoperability. We are excited to have them aboard."
To centralize development activity MBProject selected Edifecs, Inc., a leading provider of transaction interoperability solutions. "Edifecs will help us to test and certify our transactions for HIPAA compliance and work through versioning of the system," said Hardin, a former GM e-commerce consultant. "We're very excited to be a member of MBProject and participate in the deployment of the community portal," said Herb Larsen, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Seattle, WA-based Edifecs. "Our solutions support leading firms around the world and we look forward to furthering our support for medical banking stakeholders, as well."
The C.O.M.B.A.T. Initiative (which stands for "Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture and Technology") was announced in July 2005 and since has attracted a global following. Further updates will be made at MBProject's 4th National Medical Banking Institute in Nashville, TN, starting on February 22, where leaders will convene to discuss how medical banking models can transform claims processing, adoption of personal healthcare records, coordination of community healthcare and other areas. Proceedings will be captured in a "Medical Banking Road Map for America, Version 2" and delivered to government agencies.
Feb. 13, 2006 by Heather Havenstein, COMPUTERWORLD
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly begun working with 31 hospitals in 10 large cities to create a system that can send real-time data feeds from emergency rooms to the CDC.
... The hospitals are sending the data -- including patient symptoms, diagnoses and geographic information -- to the CDC over the Internet as Web services messages using the ebXML standard to guarantee reliability and secure the exchange of the messages.
February 8, 2006 By SARA SILVER, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Taking a service that is growing in Asia, Motorola Inc. is planning to launch a system that will allow people to purchase products simply by waving a cellphone with an embedded chip over scanners at the cash register.
February 2, 2006 - Chicago, IL and Lexington, KY
The MAPHIN management team announces the successful completion of interoperability testing between the MedAccessPlus Health Informatics Network (MAPHIN.net) and dozens of EHR/EMR and medical software vendors.
The 2006 Connectathon, held at RSNA headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., the week before last, brought together 64 vendors and 150 different systems, about 20 percent higher participation than last year. Joyce Sensmeier reports that about 90 percent of the testing was successful.
"I think that was a major achievement for all of them," says Joyce Sensmeier, vice president for informatics at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), one of the sponsors of the Connectathon, a week-long test of interoperability for Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). IHE is a project of HIMSS, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), and the American College of Cardiology.
"It was a very successful week," says Dan Russler, M.D., co-chair of the IHE committee on patient care and vice president of clinical technology, McKesson Provider Technologies, the Alpharetta, Ga.-based health-IT division of healthcare conglomerate McKesson Corp.
The vendors submitted their proposed testing criteria in December and had been testing their systems locally before the Connectathon. For the event, they had to repeat each same test with at least three other companies to prove true interoperability. "They want to make sure it works generally," Russler says.
In the case of electronic health records, the vendor receiving the information -- which IHE calls the "document consumer" -- should be able to: view the document; import and store the document for later viewing; and import specific patient information, such as test results or medication lists. (Senders are dubbed "document sources.")
MAPHIN.net is a provider of the "IT Infrastructure" components, which provide the middleware "glue" that ties all the EHR/EMR vendor software together to share the documents. These infrastructure components include the Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) server, the Patient Identifier Cross Referencing (PIX) server, the Patient Demographics Query (PDQ) server and the Audit Trail Node Authentication (ATNA) server. When operating together in a Service Oriented Architecture, these components use open standards from OASIS and HL7 to accomplish secure, real-time clinical document sharing across entire communities.
"EHR communication is oriented around sending and receiving of electronic messages," explains Russler, who is a member of the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Vendors Association standards workgroup and a director of standards-setting body Health Level Seven.
With this test complete, participants can look forward to IHE's second-annual Interoperability Showcase at the Feb. 12-16 HIMSS conference in San Diego.
"The HIMSS demo is the first large-scale demo of a RHIO," Russler says. While last year's inaugural Interoperability Showcase was "kind of a practice run," according to Russler, "This is organized with the security and content standards that one would actually find in a RHIO."
About MedAccess Plus Health Informatics Network (MAPHIN)
MAPHIN is a Kentucky-based eHealth firm with Electronic Health Record (EHR) networking technology that uses the Internet to integrate information generated by medical providers, insurers, hospitals and patients into a comprehensive suite of service. MAPHIN's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Steven Spady, is a highly respected Family Physician in Kentucky with a Master of Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr Spady is seen as a leader in the field of eHealth, communicating his vision for real-time, integrated healthcare information processes to government and private health organisations since 1998. MAPHIN's Chief Technology Officer, John Hardin, is seen as a leader in the Internet business field. Mr Hardin most recently served as Chief Architect of e-Business for General Motors, and is the current chair of the OASIS e-business Service Oriented Architecture Technical Committee.
John C Hardin
Chief Technology Officer
MedAccessPlus Health Informatics Network
http://www.maphin.net
606.596.1061
john@maphin.net
MedAccessPlus Health Informatics Network. For the whole picture, instantly.
This document provides brief information about the ebBP Editor, and a User Guide for end-users presenting the usage and capabilities of the ebBP Editor. Please note that, this document DOES NOT provide a background on ebBP. Moreover, the ebBP Editor is based on the ebBP v2.0.1 specification, but is not dependent on this specification. That is, it can be easily adapted to future specification versions.
The ebBP Editor is a tool designed to help the user in creating generic as well as domain specific Business Process Specifications based on ebBP Version 2.0 by using semantic mechanisms. The editor lets the user to create Process Specifications from scratch or use the existing ones.
With the support of the European Commission DG Enterprise and Industry, the CEN/ISSS Workshop eBES organizes three ebXML Market Survey Events.
These events will take place respectively in:
If you are interested do not hesitate to contact the organizers or the eBES Secretariat
AUSTIN, TX—Jan. 25, 2006—Drummond Group Inc. (DGI), the leading interoperability e-commerce certification company, today announced that seven software products from seven leading companies successfully completed the Drummond Certified™ program’s ebMS (ebXML Message Service)-4Q05 interoperability testing. This test round formally launched DGI’s Drummond Certified program designed for industries to drive adoption of technical standards and certify a stable foundation of software products to support their supply chains. Starting in 2006, all ebMS, AS1, AS2, AS3 and CSOS tests will be conducted under the Drummond Certified program.
ebMS is the messaging layer of the ebXML framework. The adoption of interoperable ebMS systems is critical to the growth of today’s marketplace to ensure that different information systems within numerous industries are able to exchange information efficiently and effectively.
Companies demonstrating interoperability among their products in the ebMS-4Q05 test round included Axway Software, Cleo Communications, Cyclone Commerce, Inc., Inovis USA, Inc., Oracle Corporation, Oxlo Systems, Inc., and Sterling Commerce. The software products from these solution providers deliver a cross-industry selection of tested standards- based, interoperable ebMS solutions to worldwide industries, including automotive, financial services, government, health care, public health and retail.
“For effective and timely responses between trading partners around the world, it is essential to choose tested and certified interoperable ebMS products,” said Rik Drummond, DGI’s chief executive officer. “Reliance on secure business data messaging techniques that are interoperable with various product versions and platforms will continue to advance to serve the needs of ever-changing industries throughout the world. These Drummond Certified solutions are ready to simplify and streamline the integration process between organizations and their customers at all levels.”
Interoperability and conformance testing of B2B and electronic commerce products are DGI’s core competency. DGI is structured to support an organization’s testing effort in an efficient, professional, cost-effective manner. By providing conformance and interoperability testing services, as well as certification and test development of software applications, DGI facilitates these professional, vendor-neutral services under its own newly- launched Drummond Certified program and various association-branded certification programs throughout several industries.
For specific ebMS-4Q05 test results, final report and registration information for 2006 test rounds, please visit: http://www.drummondgroup.com/html-v2/ebXML-companies.html.
The list below reflects products that passed the ebMS-4Q05 Drummond Certified™ interoperability test.
Company Product, Version
Axway Software ebMS Connector v2.1
Cleo Communications VersaLex™ v3.0 tested in VLTrader™ v3.0
Cyclone Commerce Cyclone Interchange/Activator/Central v5.3
Inovis USA Inc. BizManager 3.0
Oracle Corporation Oracle Application Server 10g (10.1.2)
Oxlo Systems Inc. AutoTPX ebMS MSH, v1.31
Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite/Sterling Integrator v4.1
Gaylord Opryland Hotel & Convention Center Nashville, Tennessee
The NHIT Summit, which received national recognition at its 2005 inception, drew more than 500 attendees and more than 40 exhibitors. Some of the most distinguished leaders in healthcare and technology served as headline speakers at the event, including Dr. David Brailer, Newt Gingrich, John Casillas and Gov. Phil Bredesen.
This year's event will offer the same level of high-caliber speakers with engaging and useful discussion on the factors that impact our businesses. More information on the lineup of speakers will be released soon.
Organizational Members:
Early Bird Special $199 per person for conference only (Deadline is March 20, 2006 )
Regular Registration $249 per person for conference only
To qualify as an Organizational Member, an individual must be a current, active member of a Tennessee Healthcare Professional Organization (e.g.,TN HIMSS, THA, THIMA, TMA , TAHQ, THFMA, etc.).
Non-organizational Members:
Early Bird Special $299 per person for conference only (Deadline is March 20, 2006)
Regular Registration $349 per person for conference only.
Regular Registration Deadline
The registration deadline is Friday, April 14th, 2006, by the end of the business day. If you have not received confirmation prior to the program, please call Trina Patin at (615) 503-1961 or by e-mail at 2006_NHIT_Summit_Registration@himsstn.org to confirm your registration.
For more information on Tennessee HIMSS or to become a member, please visit www.tnhimss.org .
If your company or organization is interested in NHIT Summit sponsorship opportunities, please contact Monica Summers at 2006_NHIT_Summit_Sponsorship@himsstn.org.
By Loonsk, John W; McGarvey, Sunanda R; Conn, Laura A; Johnson, Jennifer, RedOrbit
Implementation Brief
Abstract The Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Preparedness initiative strives to implement, on an accelerated pace, a consistent national network of information systems that will support public health in being prepared for public health emergencies. Using the principles and practices of the broader PHIN initiative, PHIN Preparedness concentrates in the short term on ensuring that all public health jurisdictions have, or have access to, systems to accomplish known preparedness functions. The PHIN Preparedness initiative defines functional requirements, technical standards and specifications, and a process to achieve consistency and interconnectedness of preparedness systems across public health.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2006;13:1-4. DOI 10.1197/jamia.M1815.
The Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Preparedness initiative is implementing, on an accelerated pace, a consistent national network of public health preparedness information systems. PHIN Preparedness uses the principles and practices of the broader PHIN initiative, to ensure that all public health jurisdictions will have, or have access to, systems to accomplish known preparedness functions. The anthrax attacks of 2001 revealed substantial challenges in assimilating and processing data received from multiple disparate data sources in frequently incompatible formats. The attacks, compounded by many events subsequent to the attacks, showed that preparedness systems need to be implemented at all levels of public health. The PHIN Preparedness initiative defines a process to achieve consistency and interconnectedness of preparedness systems across public health.
Case Description
A great deal has been learned about how information systems can contribute to public health preparedness since the anthrax attacks in 2001. At that time, the contributions of information technology were principally considered to be supportive, noncritical, and focused mostly around the technologies of e-mail and fax. During and since the anthrax attacks, a succession of public health events helped define what information systems can do for preparedness. These events showed the need for consistency and interconnectedness of information systems in public health nationally. They also helped to solidify the acceptance of specific information systems as a core element of preparedness.
The Public Health Information Network (PHIN) is a national multiorganizational business and technical architecture for public health information systems. PHIN was first funded in 2004 to help advance and coordinate public health information systems. In 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded $849 million through the Public Health Response and Preparedness Cooperative Agreement to help improve preparedness in all 50 states, 4 metropolitan areas, and 8 US territories.1 Some estimate that as much as 25% to 30% of these funds were used for information technology. PHIN strives to elevate the capabilities of public health information systems and integrate them across the variety of organizations that participate in public health and the wide variety of public health functional needs. The goal of the PHIN Preparedness initiative is to implement, on an accelerated pace, a consistent national network of preparedness systems. PHIN Preparedness uses the principles and practices of the broader PHIN initiative to concentrate, in the short term, on ensuring that all public health jurisdictions have, or have access to, systems to accomplish known preparedness functions.