March 2010

NHIN Direct may impinge on state HIE service plans

In launching NHIN Direct, tools designed to make it easier for small providers to share electronic health information securely, health IT policymakers are forcing states to rethink their plans for rolling out health information services in their communities.

NHIN Direct, the brain child of the Health IT Policy Committee's NHIN workgroup, would enable small healthcare organizations to ramp up health information exchange quickly by offering them basic network transport services for sharing records securely over the Internet. Time is of the essence since providers must be able to show by late 2011 that they can participate in health information exchange in order to qualify for federal health IT incentives. But offering short-cuts for these providers might throw a wrench into state plans to bundle such services into the menu of HIE offerings they plan to market to providers in their states, workgroup members acknowledged at a meeting. It would certainly throw into question the plans of those state HIEs which planned to offer secure networking transport exclusively.

ONC and the feds

The Office of Management and Budget and the Health and Human Services Department late last month called for the creation of a government-wide task force to help coordinate health IT planning among federal agencies.

The idea is to gather the senior-most health information executives from high impact health agencies -- Defense, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Commerce -- once or twice a month to synchronize health IT plans with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The meetings would be chaired by Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT. So far, so good. As the proposal from HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius and OMB director Peter Orszag points out, federal agency health IT coordination has become mostly ad hoc since the advent of the HITECH Act, which set up the administration's $20 billion health IT incentive plan. Mostly overlooked in the choice of HITECH funding targets and overshadowed by the sheer effort required to set the plan in motion, federal agencies have nonetheless pursued their individual health IT business goals.

The New News Landscape Is Omnipresent

To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the Internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads.

A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project aimed at understanding the new news landscape, reports that 56% of American adults say they follow the news "all or most of the time," and 25% follow the news at least "some of the time." 99% of American adults say that on a typical day, they get news from at least one of these media platforms: a local or national print newspaper, a local or national television news broadcast, radio or the Internet, and the Internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news. The process Americans use to get news is based on foraging and opportunism, says the report. They access news when the spirit moves them or they have a chance to check up on headlines. At the same time, gathering the news is not entirely an open-ended exploration for consumers, even online where there are limitless possibilities for exploring news. Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day.

Meet USCybercom: Why the US is fielding a cyber army

The US is in the process of creating a unified cyber command, to fight the wars of the future. The Pentagon has no doubt that the next conventional war will include a cyber element.

There will be "one guy in charge of cyber defence and offense", says Daniel Kuehl, who helped plan the air campaign for the first Gulf War before becoming the professor of information operations at the National Defense University in Washington. Amit Yoran, a former cyber security director at the Department of Homeland Security, and now head of Netwitness Corp, defines cyber war as "the use of information technologies for the purposes of conducting warfare".

Web 2.0 versus Control 2.0

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attempting to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

The "Enemies of the Internet" list drawn up again this year by Reporters Without Borders presents the worst violators of freedom of expression on the Net: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.

Among the countries "under surveillance" are several democracies: Australia, because of the upcoming implementation of a highly developed Internet filtering system, and South Korea, where draconian laws are creating too many specific restrictions on Web users by challenging their anonymity and promoting self-censorship. Turkey and Russia have just been added to the "Under Surveillance" list. Other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Belarus and Thailand are also maintaining their "under surveillance" status, but will need to make more progress to avoid getting transferred into the next "Enemies of the Internet" list. Thailand, because of abuses related to the crime of "lèse-majesté"; the Emirates, because they have bolstered their filtering system; Belarus because its president has just signed a liberticidal order that will regulate the Net, and which will enter into force this summer - just a few months before the elections.

Break the law and your new Facebook 'friend' may be the FBI

The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too. Law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, even going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that surfaced in a lawsuit.

The document shows that U.S. agents are logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives, and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips. Among the purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to crimes. The Department of Justice document also reminds government attorneys taking cases to trial that the public sections of social networks are a "valuable source" of information on defense witnesses.

"Knowledge is power," says the paper. "Research all witnesses on social networking sites."

Health Care Debate Dominates Interest and Coverage

As President Obama and Democratic leaders mounted what was characterized as the final push to pass health care reform legislation last week, the public followed the health care debate more closely than any other major story (33% say they followed this story most closely).

The debate also topped media coverage. The percentage of Americans who say they think Congress will pass health care legislation this year edged up to 43%, but about half (49%) still say lawmakers will not pass a bill in 2010. Among Democrats, 61% now say they think a health care reform bill will pass this year, up from 49% one week earlier. Only 27% of Republicans and 38% of independents say they think a bill will pass, unchanged from the previous week, according to the latest News Interest Index survey, conducted March 12-15 among 1,019 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

25 Things You Can Remote Control With Your iPhone

One of the more interesting things you can do with Apple's iPhone and iPod touch is to use it as a remote control for other devices.

Since the iPhone App Store launched almost two years ago, developers have created hundreds of remote control applications. Some of them are for entertainment -- designed to control A/V equipment in your living room. Others control household appliances, functions on your computer, or even expensive corporate security systems. For now, most remote control apps operate over the Internet, or via a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth link between your iPhone and another device. But one company is developing an infrared iPhone accessory, which will open the doors for even more remote control applications. It's conceivable that, with these apps and accessories, an iPod touch could replace the fanciest of universal remotes, and have the bonus of shipping with a Web browser and all the other apps on the App Store.

APTS President Resigning

Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, is resigning, effective April 1. No reason was given beyond that he had "professional objectives that are of great importance and urgency." Sidman joined APTS in February 2009. Sidman has agreed to assist the organization during the upcoming transition period and to be available to offer consulting services to APTS going forward in furtherance of APTS' legislative and regulatory objectives.

FCC Traveling to Tampa for April 20 Media Ownership Workshop

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau announced its next media ownership workshop on April 20, 2010 in Tampa (FL).

The workshop will explore any benefits and harms of newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership and the impact these combinations have on competition and diversity in the media marketplace. The one-panel forum will discuss, among other issues:

How newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership affects competition in the local media marketplace;
To what extent, if any, cross-ownership affects the production of news and public affairs content; and
Whether cross-owned combinations impact the quantity, quality, diversity, and responsiveness of local news and public affairs programming and if so, how.

Benton

Search