TECHNOLOGY

'Open Wide...'

The open-source movement worked wonders for software. Can it do the same for diabetes and other illnesses?

By Barrett Sheridan | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 16, 2008

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  • Posted By: F2FHealth @ 05/12/2009 5:29:20 PM

    FacetoFace Health (http://facetofacehealth.com) is designed to help patients match with each other to provide support and assistance. Healthcare message boards are great - but what if you could ask the person with the same medical conditions as you a direct question? Using healthmatch we match patients together with similar medical conditions, medications, treatment facilities and more.

    All I wanted to do was to find patients with Lymphoma who had been to MDAnderson to ask them a question.

  • Posted By: qnahealth @ 02/10/2009 11:23:54 AM

    Qnahealth is a new social network for health related information and support. It???s designed to be friendly and easy to use and is focused around users asking and answer questions and sharing their experiences and knowledge.

    http://www.qnahealth.com

    We invite everyone to take a look as they explore their online health information options.

  • Posted By: bamboolife @ 10/26/2008 1:40:48 AM

    Pls check your facts. McCain has not released his health records to the public.

  • Posted By: MegaDeath @ 10/22/2008 2:45:20 PM

    Obama Praised 'Searing and Timely' Book by Ayers
    Barack Obama once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by former domestic terrorist William Ayers and was mentioned by name in the book itself. This story is about two gay men who could not stand to be away from each other. Kind of like "Brokeback Mountain".

  • Posted By: WellPoint @ 10/22/2008 11:20:36 AM

    Obama and McCain agreed in recent debates about the importance of expanding the adoption of health IT. Sheridan correctly highlighted that this technology has the potential to dramatically improve health care quality and safety, simplify its delivery, empower patients and significantly improve the efficiency of care delivery. To ensure that all Americans will benefit from these advances, both the public and private sectors have important roles to play in the development of and dialogue about this technology.

    Sheridan???s article is not factually accurate however in its characterizations of the health insurance industry in general and WellPoint in particular. The reality is that health information has been on line for over 20 years and has been used for actuarial, billing and administrative purposes and already includes diagnosis, procedures, drugs, and in some cases, lab data. In fact, our health industry would not function if it were not electronic. What is new is the use of electronic information in physician offices, hospitals, and other care settings. Clinical information in those settings is still largely paper based.

    Many health insurers are working to help transform the paper world of clinical care into an electronic one. One path is ePrescribing. By making the drug data that we and other insurers have available to physicians in the office, we can help avoid drug-drug interactions and other safety challenges. We can help reduce costs by making sure the physician has the health plan???s formulary at their fingertips. And we can reduce transcription errors from pharmacists trying to read physicians (often challenging) handwriting. This is not a hesitation on the health insurance industry???s part to make this data available. It is available. The problem - it is only used by physicians on less than 10% of all prescriptions. There are current actions underway by the Federal Government to provide incentives for greater physician adoption. WellPoint has similar incentives in many markets it serves.

    If health information technology is going to have the impact we all want it to have, then we need complete and accurate information and data. Sheridan's implication that people should withhold information due to pre-existing exclusions was dealt with the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPAA) which is federal legislation designed to ensure that your data is protected and stays private and secure.

    We believe that information technologies like these, when properly implemented and if widely adopted, will save money and improve quality and efficiency, a great benefit for us all.

    Dr. Charles Kennedy
    Vice President of Health Information Technology, WellPoint, Inc.

  • Posted By: free067 @ 10/21/2008 10:22:31 PM

    I, for one, do not like it nor do I want anything to do with it. People, for the most part, are just snoopy. They really don't care if you're sick or not, just as long as they are still healthy. I want to hang on to as much of my privacy as I can, while I can.

  • Posted By: RDCoster @ 10/21/2008 3:38:27 PM

    While laudable in their intent, both candidates have been ill served by their advisors. The issue is not really money it is the myriad competing players in the Healthcare industry.

    I have worked for a company that produces software for hospitals and the one underlying constant of all its functionality was the specific elements of the information - name, address, insurance etc. Every HC software company has differing information - there is little or no commonality. Even common elements such as a name have multiple formats which require complex rules to equalize. For instance how is an address held - How many address lines, do we hold county and country? Zip or Zip +4? As readable characters or as numeric format.

    Another issue is the electronic coding standards used for diagnosis and procedures and consequently the patient history and billing. There are so many to choose from - SNOMED, ICD-9, ICD-10, CPT-4, HCPCS, the list is endless. No single set has been agreed upon by the industry - Hospitals, Doctors, Nurses, MEd Companies.

    Until or unless the Federal government defines and mandates a common set of informational elements complete with explicit formatting with economically crippling punishments NO EHR process will ever succeed. Save the money UNTIL every player has implemented a common 'core' set of mandated elements and agreed a single set of medical encodings for the EHR.

  • Posted By: thenationaldialogue @ 10/20/2008 7:35:56 AM

    Information technology has the power to dramatically improve our healthcare system. But concerns about protecting citizens ??? and our most personal information ??? must be resolved.

    How can we realize the benefits of health IT while safeguarding privacy?
    Help find the answer at: www.thenationaldialogue.org

    Over eight days beginning October 27th, thousands of experts, advocates and citizens will discuss the thorny issues involved in leveraging technology to enhance our health system.

    Sign up now to participate and ensure your voice is heard. The results of this online dialogue will be compiled into a report to the Federal CIO Council and the incoming Administration. This unique experiment in democracy is hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration, a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on good government, in partnership with AmericaSpeaks and Delib.

  • Posted By: RobTer @ 10/16/2008 9:47:22 PM

    The phrase "... have embraced the Web 2.0 ideals of transparency and decentralized problem-solving???what technologists call "open source." ..." is blatantly wrong. The term "web 2.0' means embracing the Internet as a platform enhance creativity, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. The term "Open Source" is a development methodology, which offers practical accessibility to a product's source. Whoever wrote this article needs to either do their homework, or get a different job.

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