Podcast: A call to action
My post last week wondering if health IT was part of the massive response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster drew a very interesting e-mail.
Jordan Glogau, chief technology officer of Preferred Health Resources, a medical billing services company in Nanuet, N.Y., made the following suggestion:
“Why don’t people nationwide volunteer to put up servers that are running open-source PM/EMR software like VistA or ClearHealth. I am sure that what the Red Cross is doing won’t have enough resources to address all the needs of everyone in trouble in the Gulf Coast states.”
He added, “This would give everyone involved a chance to experiment with a national healthcare records system, under duress,” and said that his company was willing to offer some servers and bandwidth.
I wrote about this idea in a Health-IT World column on Wednesday, but I thought I could do more. So I got Glogau on the phone to talk about how the health IT community could help. This podcast is the result.
Please listen, pass the recording around, e-mail me with your thoughts and, if you have something to offer the hurricane relief effort, get in touch with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology or a trade group like the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, who are trying to formulate some sort of plan.
1:05 Explanation of plan
2:45 Open-source software
3:10 Standards
3:40 Rude interruption by Call Waiting beep
4:40 Power of the Internet to solve problems
5:45 Disease surveillance
7:25 HIPAA
9:10 Urgency of situation
10:40 Interest from others in health IT
11:35 Quick deployment of technology
12:20 How to get in touch
13:30 Call for action
You might also want to check out the Hardhats thread on the Katrina relief effots of the VistA community. http://www.mail-archive.com/hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net/
A few weeks ago Jordan contacted me about the possiblity of an effort using ClearHealth in the relief efforts. The result is the Open Source EHR Katrina Relief Network. We need volunteers who are willing to help use Open Source Software for effected clinics and hospitals. Please consider posting this to your main blog!Thanks,Fred Trotter