January 2012

A look at five health information technology trends for the year to come.

1. Meaningful Use Takes Off: My prediction is that at least 100,000 providers will receive Medicare or Medicaid EHR incentive payments by the end of 2012. But, in order for my prediction to come true, the entire health IT ecosystem, including technology vendors, physician and hospital leaders, Regional Extension Centers, state-level health IT coordinators, public health agencies, and many others need to pull together toward getting as many providers to Meaningful Use as possible.
2. Health Information Exchange Turns a Corner: Standards development is now focusing on the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) since the health information exchange requirements will become more rigorous in Stage 2 of Meaningful Use in order to support the care coordination functions and advanced care processes that providers will need to succeed under new payment approaches. As the business value for exchange increases, our standards efforts will bear fruit, reducing the cost and complexity of implementing basic exchange functions like sending a care summary or receiving lab results. With increased value and lowered cost, information will start to flow.
3. Connecting the Dots on Health IT and Payment Reform: As more providers adopt EHRs and go through the process of attesting to Meaningful Use, I believe they will increasingly see the direct connections between health IT, new payment models, and the ways in which the former can help them succeed with the latter. Moreover, EHRs, health information exchange, and other forms of health IT will increasingly be seen as key enablers within new payment models themselves. We are headed toward a virtuous cycle where payment reform improves the business case for using health IT and greater use of health IT improves the chances that new payment models will succeed.
4. Consumers Use eHealth to Get More Involved: I believe this year we will see consumers and patients use information technology to become better informed about their health and more engaged with their own care than ever before. In large part, this will happen because it’s becoming easier for consumers to electronically access their own information.
5. Innovation Drives Improvement: Mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets are being directly integrated into health IT systems, and I expect this trend will continue to pick up speed as capabilities such as voice recognition are perfected.

The fight to retain local government authority over building community broadband networks in Georgia has officially begun.

The Broadband Investment Equity Act (SB 313) was introduced in the Georgia Senate on Jan. 19. If it becomes law, the bill would enact numerous barriers to providing government-owned broadband services, including the requirements that private providers be solicited first before establishing a community broadband network and that a special election must be held for citizens to approve the project. According to a statement released by the Georgia Senate Press Office, the goal of SB 313 is to encourage private investment and level the playing field by making government entities adhere to the same rules that private companies follow when establishing communication networks.

A study from Stanford University wrestles with a new question: How is technology affecting their happiness and emotional development?

The answer, in the peer-reviewed study of the online habits of girls ages 8 to 12, is that those who say they spend considerable amounts of time using multimedia describe themselves in ways that suggest they are less happy and less socially comfortable than peers who say they spend less time on screens. The research raises as many questions as it seeks to answer, as the scientists readily acknowledge. That is because the research was based on an online survey taken by more than 3,400 girls, a sample that may well not be representative of the larger population and, because the responses are self-reported, are not subject to follow-up or verification by the researchers. Among the crucial questions that the researchers were not able to answer is whether the heavy use of media was the cause for the relative unhappiness or whether girls who are less happy to begin with are drawn to heavy use of media, in effect retreating to a virtual world. But the researchers hypothesize that heavy use of media is a contributing factor to the social challenges of girls.

Google may have changes to its privacy policy assessed by the Irish and French data-protection agencies. Google said it will combine more than 70 privacy policies for some of its separate products, including Android software for mobile phones, to create a “beautifully simple, intuitive user experience.” The changes take effect on March 1. Ireland’s data-protection agency will “be further assessing the implications of the changes now that they are launched to users,” Gary Davis, the country’s deputy data- protection commissioner, said. Google and Facebook have their European headquarters in Ireland. Facebook last month agreed to overhaul its service in Europe after a probe by the country’s data-protection agency. Google was targeted earlier by data- protection authorities across the European Union over its Street View program, which lets users click on maps to see photographs of roadsides. France’s National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties will also examine the policies, Bertrand Pailhes, an official at the agency known as CNIL, said. He said CNIL intends to reach an informal opinion that won’t be legally binding.