Tag: ICSA Labs

NHIT Week: Raising Awareness to Improve Quality and Efficiency of Healthcare

For the ninth year, national health IT week is in full swing, from Sept. 15 – 19, 2014. Those in healthcare, policy makers and stakeholders have come together to “collaborative forum for public and private healthcare constituents to discuss the value of health information technology (IT) for the U.S. healthcare system.”

HIMSS is again hosting a lineup of events and activities centered in the DC. According to the organization, the event is designed as health IT continues its advancement to “improve the quality of healthcare delivery, increase patient safety, decrease medical errors, and strengthen the interaction between patients and healthcare providers.”

For those of us in health IT, NHIT Week is a forum, a conversation starter and an awareness builder that assembles healthcare constituents dedicated to working together to elevate the necessity of advancing health through the best use of information technology. As a brand awareness campaign, the effort is paying off and bringing about deeper conversations with health IT game changers, leaders and those who wish to learn more about the ramifications of the technology on the overall landscape.

That said, and because of the importance of the event, I asked a few folks for their reaction to NHIT Week. Their responses follow:

Arvind Subramanian, president and CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions

Arvind Subramanian
Arvind Subramanian

Vision, innovation, hard work and perseverance are foundational to any significant change for the better. These are fundamental components of the health IT movement—an ever-evolving landscape that has experienced tremendous successes, along with its share of challenges.

National Health IT Week offers a platform for celebrating progress and expanding awareness of the tremendous potential of health IT to advance healthcare’s broader goals of improved outcomes and lower costs. It’s an opportunity for those deeply involved in the movement and those watching it unfold from a distance to come together and remember what forms the core of its agenda: improving the human experience and saving lives.

Here at Wolters Kluwer Health, we have the advantage of seeing the outcomes associated with advances in clinical content integration, clinical knowledge management and data analytics every day. Whether it’s a highly effective response to a public health crisis or the ability to mitigate adverse outcomes through real-time patient surveillance, our clients are experiencing a transformation to more highly-effective care delivery.

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“What is the Value of Health IT?”

For its second year of celebrating National Health IT Week, HIMSS is asking a simple question: “What is the value of HIT?”

Seems like a simple question, but there don’t seem to be any simple answers. The fact is there seems to be a different answer depending on who you ask. So, instead of offering my lone — and probably less than expert – opinion I’ve asked a variety of folks who are probably better able to give more insightful and valuable opinions than mine.

Brian Wells
Brian Wells

Brian Wells, associate vice president of healthcare technology and academic computing, Penn Medicine – UPHS “The value of Health IT is centered on the liberation of information. The act of capturing health data in electronic form allows that data to be used for multiple purposes: patient care, quality improvement, cost optimization, research, education, etc. The value increases exponentially if the data is stored and shared using structural and semantic standards.  This enables data from multiple sources to be aggregated while retaining its original meaning (value).  The promise of personalized or precision medicine will only be realized if health IT is used to gather the rich phenotypes of all patients and link that to their genotypes.”

Mark Frisse, M.D., professor of biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University “Health IT enables patients and their clinicians to make more informed decisions by bringing to care settings a comprehensive view of the patient’s health status as well as evidence-based care guidelines to inform consensual decision-making. Health IT promises more efficient and effective care delivery, accurate reporting of care quality, and timely assessments of public health. Health IT can enforce patient privacy preferences and other policy requirements. Properly implemented within a system of care, these technologies enable better communication and may allow clinicians and patients to transform care in positive and sometimes dramatic ways.” Continue Reading