Tag: Brian Ahier

Caveat Online Health Information Emptor?

Jul 10, 2013• 11

By Brian Ahier

Patients who search on free health-related websites for information related to a medical condition may have the health information they provide leaked to third party tracking entities through code on those websites, according to a research letter by Marco D. Huesch, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

The research letter was recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine entitled “Privacy Threats When Seeking Online Health Information” and looked at how 20 health-related websites track visitors, ranging from the sites of the National Institutes of Health to the health news section of The New York Times online. Thirteen of the sites had at least one potentially worrisome tracker, according to the analysis performed by Dr. Huesch.

He also found evidence that health search terms he tried — herpes, cancer and depression — were shared by seven sites with outside companies. According to the paper:

“A patient who searches on a “free” health-related website for information related to “herpes” should be able to assume that the inquiry is anonymous. If not anonymous, the information knowingly or unknowingly disclosed by the patient should not be divulged to others.
Unfortunately, neither assumption may be true. Anonymity is threatened by the visible Internet address of the patient’s computer or the often unique configuration of the patient’s web browser. Confidentiality is threatened by the leakage of information to third parties through code on websites (eg, iframes, conversion pixels, social media plug-ins) or implanted on patients’ computers (eg, cookies, beacons).”

Dr. Huesch says that he was inspired to investigate this area by the archive of coverage on the topic by The Wall Street Journal on how the technology and market for your online information work. The most recent piece in this series is on Facebook privacy settings and some of the risks associated with “Graph Search.” This entire series is very good and worth the read.

User Fees for Electronic Health Records?

Apr 15, 2013• 8

By Brian Ahier

President Obama has released his 2014 budget proposal, which includes $80.1 billion in spending for theDepartment of Health and Human Services (HHS), an increase of $3.9 billion. The proposed budget for The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) would increase its $61 million budget to $78 million, a 28% increase. The plan also includes a $1 million fee for electronic health record vendors that would almost certainly be passed along to users of the systems.

“In addition to the expanding marketplace and corresponding increase in workload for ONC, much of the work to date has been funded using Recovery Act funds scheduled to expire at the end of FY 2013. Consequently, a new revenue source is necessary to ensure that ONC can continue to fully administer the Certification Program as well as invest resources to improve its efficiency,” the ONC explains in the budget proposal appendix.

In particular, the fee could be used to fund:

Development of implementation guides and other forms of technical assistance for incorporating standards and specifications into products
Development of health IT testing tools that are used by developers, testing laboratories and certification bodies
Development of consensus standards, specifications and policy documents related to health IT certification criteria
Administration of the ONC Health IT Certification Program and maintenance of the Certified Health IT Product List
Post-market surveillance, field testing and monitoring of certified products to ensure they are meeting applicable performance metrics in the clinical environment

Building a Better Health Care System: Electronic Health Records Could Help Identify Which Patients Most Need ICU Resources

Feb 4, 2013• 2

By Brian Ahier

It wasn’t until I had read this.

A national shortage of critical care physicians and beds means difficult decisions for healthcare professionals: how to determine which of the sickest patients are most in need of access to the intensive care unit. What if patients’ electronic health records could help a physician determine ICU admission by reliably calculating which patient had the highest risk of death?

Emerging health technologies – including reliable methods to rate the severity of a patient’s condition – may provide powerful tools to efficiently use scarce and costly health resources, says a team of University of Michigan Health System researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“The lack of critical care beds can be frustrating and scary when you have a patient who you think would benefit from critical care, but who can’t be accommodated quickly. Electronic health records – which provide us with rich, reliable clinical data – are untapped tools that may help us efficiently use valuable critical care resources,” says hospitalist and lead author Lena M. Chen, M.D., M.S., assistant professor in internal medicine at the University of Michigan and an investigator at the Center for Clinical Management Research(CCMR), VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

The UMHS and VA study referenced in the article finds that patients’ severity of illness is not always strongly associated with their likelihood of being admitted to the ICU, challenging the notion that limited and expensive critical care is reserved for the sickest patients. ICU admissions for non-cardiac patients closely reflected severity of illness (i.e., sicker patients were more likely to go to the ICU), but ICU admissions for cardiac patients did not, the study found. While the reasons for this are unclear, authors note that the ICU’s explicit role is to provide care for the sickest patients, not to respond to temporary staffing issues or unavailable recovery rooms. Continue reading…

Nationwide Health Information Network Comes of Age

Aug 30, 2012• 2

By Brian Ahier

The Nationwide Health Information Network Exchange (NwHIN Exchange, or just Exchange) has been operating as an ONC program since 2007. For the past three years, a rapidly growing community of public and private organizations (Exchange Participants) has been routinely sharing information in production. That community now represents thousands of providers and millions of patients. Healtheway is new a non-profit, public-private partnership that will operationally support the eHealth Exchange (formerly referred to as the NwHIN Exchange).

On August 1, 2012, the Exchange Coordinating Committee appointed three representatives to serve on the Healtheway Board of Directors, including: Michael Matthews (CEO, MedVirginia), Paul Matthews (CTO, OCHIN) and Jan Root (CEO, Utah Health Information Network). These individuals, along with Healtheway’s Interim Executive Director, Mariann Yeager, will serve as the initial board of directors for the non-profit. The remaining Healtheway board seats will be filled by up to nine elected Healtheway members. The company launched its Member Program in August 2012, with elections for the member board seats expected in the Fall 2012.