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‘Five rights’ for data administration

You know about the “five rights” for medication administrations: the right drug, for the right patient, in the right dosage, on the right route, at the right time.

More recently we’ve seen “five rights” for effective clinical decision support: the right information, to the right stakeholder, at the right point in workflow, through the right channel, in the right format.

Now, security vendor Symantec brings us the “five rights” for data administration: Read more..

September 21, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Facebook + health data = all sorts of HIPAA questions

“Time’s Person of the Year is Mark Zuckerberg. Sorry, Julian Assange, I guess you didn’t violate enough people’s privacy.” — Stephen Colbert, Dec. 15, 2010.

Yes, Facebook has issues with privacy. Just Monday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse formally asked the Federal Trade Commission to stop Facebook from launching a facial-recognition feature. Last week, European regulators said they would investigate Facebook after it came out that Facebook’s 500 million to 700 million users were automatically opted in to facial recognition.

And now we hear that Microsoft is adding Facebook authentication to its HealthVault health information platform.

Let me repeat: You can now sign in via Facebook to a HealthVault personal health record.

Though I’m not a lawyer, I’m wondering if Microsoft might not be treading in some dangerous territory. What if it’s possible to link HealthVault updates to Facebook so your entire social network knows that you just got a lab test result back? What if the Facebook location tagger indicates that you’ve just visited an STD clinic? Yeah, sometimes discretion is in order, and Facebook generally isn’t the place to be discreet.

According to Healthcare IT News’ MobileHealthWatch blog, Microsoft’s Sean Nolan was practically giddy about this arrangement helping HealthVault go mobile. I think mobility will help make PHRs a bit more attractive to patients, but I still think PHRs are DOA if they don’t link to EHRs.

I just don’t see a lot of medical practices being willing to send electronic data back and forth to HealthVault accounts if Facebook is handling the security, making MobileHealthWatch’s claim that, in wake of the supposed demise or at least de-emphasis of Google Health, HealthVault is now “more or less unchallenged as the PHR of record” a joke. There’s no such thing as a PHR of record, and there won’t be as long as authentication passes through Facebook.

 

June 13, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Do you trust the cloud for EHRs?

Do you trust the cloud for EHRs? That’s the question I ask in my weekly post for EMR and HIPAA. Check it out, and share your opinion.

May 26, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Blogging by Twitter?

Oh man, I’ve been busy. I filled in as writer of the Midwest edition of Payers and Providers the last two weeks because regular editor Duncan Moore, a former colleague, had been hospitalized. (Get well soon, Duncan.) I’ve been at the Institute for Health Technology Transformation health IT summit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., since yesterday, and I’ve also had my regular deadlines for InformationWeek and MobiHealthNews.

I moderated two IHT2 conference sessions yesterday, on how health IT underpins Accountable Care Organizations and how business intelligence can create a framework for health information exchange. I haven’t had time to blog about those, but several people seem to have tweeted during those sessions. I therefore present a rundown via Twitter.

@narmi91 #iHT2 FMA #HIE strategy: Simple HIE gives physicians instant value, allows them to dip their tow in the water.

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIE strategy: Adopt exchange before adopting #EHR. Which would you choose Internet (HIE) or PC (EHR)?

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Primary care medical home is a must for ACO. Paying patients to perform. Also focus on medical assistants & nurses.

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Changing patient behavior: need to engage patients. BCBS has new benefit plan $300-700 cash for manage health and qual.

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Fed/state gov are more on the side of privacy but security always comes down to human behavior.

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Pace of tech adoption in healthcare is much slower than other industries: Privacy & security, care coord, social sci.

@ICALeader Dr Freeman says healthcare is more focused on quality assurance than quality improvement, need multi-disciplinary groups to achieve QI #iHT2

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Quality improvement process can help identify clinical decision support.

@narmi91 #iHT2 #HIT for #ACO: Victor from HRSA – HIE challenges include security issues and not enough discrete data. Most #EHR not designed for qual

@ICALeader Kevin Mather says upside & downside risk must be high & metrics must be measured for quality & cost monthly for ACO success #iHT2 #HIE #ACO

@ICALeader Dr. Freeman reminds #ACO & #HIE not to forget federal healthcare DOD, VA & IHS agencies in effort to coordinate care @ #iHT2 FTL

@bhparrish: Patient-centered #HIE with secure communication will be essential infrastructure for #ACO development. <RT @ICALeader> #iHT2


May 11, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Spring training for Health Wonk Review

 

The sun is shining here in Chicago and the mercury is supposed to hit 60 degrees today for the first time in months. That could mean only one thing: Spring is in the air, and hope springs eternal, even for the star-crossed Cubs. Though it’s still spring training, noted Yankees fan Glenn Laffel of the Pizaazz blog is in midseason form as he hosts this week’s Health Wonk Review, with an all-star lineup of contributors.

My impassioned defense of Don Berwick makes the big-league roster among the sluggers (health policy), while health IT gets its due respect as a disruptive force by being categorized as the base-stealers.

Of note, longtime HIT blogger Shahid Shah, known as the Healthcare IT Guy, talks security. “I hear a lot of naive talk about how systems are secure because ‘we use SSL encryption’ or ‘we’re secure because we have a firewall.’  Anybody who’s been security and privacy work for more than a few months would know how false those statements are,” he writes. To continue the baseball analogy, it’s like a pitcher making a couple of light tosses over to first to keep the base runner honest, then leaving the next pitch out over the middle of the plate.

And now back to an afternoon of watching basketball, er, I mean, answering e-mail or something. o:-)

 

March 17, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.