Private Sector Gives ONC Report Qualified Praise
By Neil Versel, contributing editor

WASHINGTON—Health IT advocates in the private sector are giving qualified praise to a federal plan to sharpen the government’s focus on the twin goals of high-quality, cost-efficient, patient-focused health care and of improved population health.

“I like the topic areas,” Charlene Underwood, director of government and industry affairs for hospital systems vendor Siemens Medical Solutions USA (Malvern, Pa.), says of the “ONC-Coordinated Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan: 2008-2012.” released last week by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). “It had very specific objectives and it had tactics underneath it.”

The report stated that the federal government can help the nation achieve the two overarching goals by facilitating secure access to and exchange of electronic health information and continuing to promote adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and personal health records (PHRs). More...

Wal-Mart Strives to Engage Health Care Consumers
By Neil Versel, contributing editor

WASHINGTON—In the realm of health IT, Wal-Mart Stores is aiming far beyond its participation in the Dossia personal health records (PHR) project. The Bentonville, Ark., retail behemoth seeks to become a catalyst for interoperability by paying attention to customer convenience.

Wal-Mart already has made clear its intent to open 400 in-store health clinics by 2010, up from the current 70. “These clinics are like Trojan horses,” John Agwunobi, president of Wal-Mart health and wellness business unit, said here Monday in a keynote address to the midyear Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Summit. More...

Executive Q&A
ONC Plan Proposes Challenges for Implementation
By Cindy Atoji

The newly released ONC strategic plan is an intelligent approach, says James Champy, chairman of Perot Systems Corp. consulting practice. Champy, who is also head of strategy for Perot and one of the founders of the management theory behind Business Process Reengineering (BPR), has long been advocating using information technology to develop a patient-centric services model, one of the primary goals of the ONC plan. To do this, says Champy, IT has to be harnessed to make a fundamental change in the way health care is delivered. “The more transformational IT can be, the more value it can create. This argues for more radical change.”

Champy spoke with Digital HealthCare & Productivity about how he thinks the ONC plan could become a reality, the business case for health IT, and getting the most value out of technology spends.

DHP: What’s your reaction to the federal health IT strategic plan just released by the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator)?
CHAMPY: The plan takes a very sound approach in that it is not proposing a single large system. The U.K. has been challenged in its approach to build large, regional systems. The U.S. plan takes a coordinated approach, leveraging the major investments and progress that many institutions have already made. The approach is one of “harmonization” of the efforts already underway. This approach is much more likely to work.

Some level of standardization (processes, software, and technology) will still be required, and the plan acknowledges this. But achieving standardization in health care has always been a challenge. Without it, however, we will not achieve the goals of the plan.

Small to medium sized institutions may also be challenged in participating in the effort. The plan requires resources at all levels and from all participants to make it work—and smaller institutions may need some financial and professional help.
On the whole, the plan is very complete in its thinking. The challenge, as always, will be in its implementation. More...

Kaiser Backs Microsoft Patient-Data Plan

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit health maintenance organization, is endorsing the drive toward consumer-controlled personal health records in a partnership with Microsoft. The partnership, announced Monday, will begin with a pilot project open to Kaiser’s 156,000 employees, which will run until November, according to the report in The New York Times. If successful, the product linking Kaiser’s patient information with Microsoft’s Health Vault personal health record service will be offered to Kaiser’s 8.7 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia.

“This is a big step for us, and our first partnership with a consumer health record supplier,” said Anna-Lisa Silvestre, Kaiser’s vice president for online services.

There are several companies offering personal health records on the Web, but the big new players are Microsoft, which entered the field last October, and Google, which came in last month. Read full New York Times report...

Deals, Deployments, and Short News
Allison Proffitt, Digital HealthCare & Productivity Staff

Merge Healthcare announces reorganization and management changes, National Alliance of Health Information Technology announces new framework, Drugs.com releases iPhone-ready edition, and more…

LIFE SCIENCE JOBS

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - Application Analyst
MSKCC Genomics Core seeks an Application Analyst to configure UNIX and Windows systems, maintain LIMS server and install analysis software. Requires a Master’s degree, UNIX experience, and knowledge of a language besides PERL beyond the beginning level. Email Jobops5@mskcc.org or www.mskcc.org #015563. EOE/AA

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - Bioinformatics Engineer MSKCC Bioinformatics Core in Manhattan seeks Bioinformatics Engineer. Design and develop bioinformatics
processing and analysis pipelines for traditional and next-gen sequence data. Consult with, train, and analyze data for researchers. Master's degree and 5 years experience in Bioinformatics software development, sequence assembly, SQL, Perl, Python. Email bic-jobs@cbio.mskcc.org or www.mskcc.org #015415. EOE/AA

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - Linux Systems Administrator - MSKCC Bioinformatics Core in Manhattan seeks Linux Systems Administrator. Install, configure and update OS, databases, software. Monitor and troubleshoot HPC cluster, email and web servers. Master's degree and 5 years experience with HPC, network security, Postfix, Apache, Tomcat, Grid Engine. Email bic-jobs@cbio.mskcc.org or www.mskcc.org #015429. EOE/AA

Paradigm-Sales/Business Development – IT Solutions and Services
Paradigm (www.Paradigminfotech.com) is a global IT services and solutions provider. Paradigm has over 1000 employees and is the recipient INC. 500 and D&T Fast 50 consistently. Paradigm is looking for SALES / BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PEOPLE. Experience: 2-3 years Direct sales experience in Software Solutions or Services including Application development or support and preferably selling to Pharmaceutical, CROs or Health care industries. Location:Columbia, MD,Contact: Erin Lowman, erin@paradigminfotech.com, 410-872-1008 x 100

More Life Science Jobs ~ Add a Job Listing

FEATURED EVENTS

Computing Short Courses at MIT - June / July - Cambridge, MA

BIO International Convention - June 17 – 20, 2008, San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA

DIA 44th Annual Meeting, June 22-26, Boston,MA

5th Annual Meeting on the NCI’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid—CaBIG—initiative (Annual Meeting)S -June 23-25, 2008, Washington,DC

2nd Label-Free Protein Array- Latest Advances in Analysis of Macromolecular Interactions,July 3-4th 2008 -Paris- France

Barnett Educational Services, 2008 Schedule

To have your event featured here, contact Lynn Cloonan for more information.