e-News April 7, 2011

April 7, 2011

April 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 14


AMIA Education/Events Partnerships in Innovation Demonstrate Best of Breed in PHI Zimmer Blogs About His TBI Summit Keynote NLM Celebrates 175th Anniversary with Conference on Clinical Trials From Singapore: a Report on International e-Learning Course i10x10	Policy & Government Affairs AMIA Provides Input to NQF on eMeasures Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Pharmacy Data Case HHS Releases Proposed Rule on ACOs HHS Establishing Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing HHS to Unveil Health and Health Care Disparities Roadmap New Paper Addresses Digital Divide in Adoption and Use of PHR Collaborative Group Releases Landmark Consensus Document on ACOs, Medical Homes Calendar	Member News AMIA Leaders Publish Informatics Paper in AAMC Journal VA Announces VAi2 Innovation Competition $3 Million Competition to Create Predictive Algorithm

Partnerships in Innovation Demonstrate Best of Breed in PHI

PHI 2011, May 25-27, in Orlando, features 20 Partnerships in Innovation presentations. Each Partnerships in Innovation presentation team will highlight a case study of a successful informatics partnership in a 90-minute presentation: both sides of the partnership will feature a speaker. SPC Chair Barbara L. Massoudi describes the Partnerships in Innovation component of the conference as an educational means to “highlight the way informatics projects should be run, in collaboration with a project sponsor organization and the organization that undertakes the work.” She adds, “It takes a multidisciplinary team to effectively innovate solid informatics projects.”

One Partnerships in Innovation presentation will be showcased by Dave Ross, ScD, Executive Director of Public Health Informatics Institute, a PHI 2011 Collaborative Partner. With Marcus Cheatham, PhD, Deputy Director of Ingham County Health Department, Lansing, Mich., the pair will discuss “Emerging Themes, Strategic Goals and Priorities for Advancing PHI.” This session will highlight common themes significant to the future of PHI from three different sources: the e-Public Health Initiative, the recent IOM report on public health called, For the Public’s Health and the IOM’s Consensus Framework for Advancing Public Health Informatics.

Look for the daily schedule of PHI 2011 activities–online now–and more detailed abstracts of educational content later this month at http://phi2011.amia.org. April 7 is the final day to register for the meeting at low early-registration rates.

Zimmer Blogs About His TBI Summit Keynote

Yale lecturer, journalist, and author Carl Zimmer presented a talk, "The Inner Jungle: The Natural History of the Human Microbiome," to a record-number crowd at this year’s Summit on Translational Bioinformatics in San Francisco. The virtual transcript and findings he discussed at the TBI Summit appear online at Dr. Zimmer’s Discover magazine blog, The Loom: click here.

NLM Celebrates 175th Anniversary with Conference on Clinical Trials

On June 6-7, with support from AMIA and other partners, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is presenting their 2011 conference, "Clinical Trials: New Challenges and Opportunities." As part of NLM’s 175th Anniversary celebration, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, will discuss pressing issues in clinical trials. Dr. Collins (who is presenting the keynote address at AMIA’s 35th Annual Symposium on Biomedical and Health Informatics later this year) will cover:

Roles of NIH and ClinicalTrials.gov, the FDA, industry, and academia;
Effects of social media, Web 2.0, and patient-driven networks on clinical research;
Clinical research’s response to public health needs;
New ways to improve trials’ efficiency and quality;
Forging government-industry partnerships; and
Using clinical trials to improve patient care.

The NLM conference will be held at the Natcher Center at NIH in Bethesda, Md. To learn more about the conference and to register, click here.

From Singapore: a Report on International e-Learning Course i10x10

AMIA’s internationally-focused, i10x10 course, Gateway to Health Informatics, has just completed its program with 24 successful graduates. This virtual course, an extension of the popular OHSU 10x10 course, is offered in Singapore and taught by Dr. Kwok-Chan Lun, PhD, The National University of Singapore. The next i10x10 course will be offered beginning in May.

Along with the 10x10 courses offered through university partners in the United States, AMIA now offers an internationally-focused variation of the successful 10x10 program called i10x10. Courses qualifying for the i10x10 program should be endorsed by a local or regional International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) member society. Global partners interested in offering courses and learning more about i10x10 should contact AMIA.

Don’t forget to register and secure your spot in one of the seven courses currently available, beginning soon. Click here to view current 10x10 courses.

AMIA Provides Input to NQF on eMeasures

AMIA recently submitted comments to the National Quality Forum (NQF) during an open comment period soliciting input on the 113 re-tooled "eMeasures." These eMeasures are standard measurements in healthcare that have been converted to be more easily read by electronic health record (EHR) systems. In the comments, AMIA President and CEO Ted Shortliffe notes that integration of patient-centered measures within EHRs is a core building-block for creating a higher quality, more affordable healthcare system, and is necessary to support meaningful use of EHRs. To read AMIA's full comments, click here.

Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Pharmacy Data Case

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on April 26, in the case of Sorrell v. IMS Health. The case centers on the constitutionality of a Vermont law that bans the use of a physician’s prescribing history in the marketing of medicine. A decision is likely to come by the end of June. For more information about the case, click here.

HHS Releases Proposed Rule on ACOs

This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Donald Berwick released the long-awaited federal rule on accountable care organizations (ACOs). It is hoped that the new organizations will help providers work more closely together to lower costs, and potentially save Medicare up to $960 million over three years. To view the full proposed rule, click here.

HHS Establishing Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Office of Acquisitions Management, Contracts & Grants are seeking to establish U.S.-based Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing. The centers will be public-private partnerships that share facility construction costs, facilitate development and manufacturing of medical countermeasure (MCM) product candidates, ensure domestic vaccine and other biopharmaceutical manufacturing surge capacity in an emergency, and provide workforce development training programs. For more information, click here.

HHS to Unveil Health and Health Care Disparities Roadmap

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Friday, April 8, will unveil its roadmap for reducing health and healthcare disparities, an effort to address differences in health for racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities. The HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity are meant to guide public and private sector efforts to provide every American with the opportunity to reach their full potential. For more information, click here.

New Paper Addresses Digital Divide in Adoption and Use of PHR

A new paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine discusses how personal health records (PHRs) offer potential to improve the patient experience and quality of patient care, while at the same time they may accentuate the socioeconomic "digital divide" that may prevent certain groups from accessing their PHRs. The authors conclude, among other things, that despite increasing internet availability, racial/ethnic minority patients adopted a PHR less frequently than white patients, and patients with the lowest annual income adopted a PHR less often than those with higher incomes. To access the paper, click here.

Collaborative Group Releases Landmark Consensus Document on ACOs, Medical Homes

The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, in partnership with The Commonwealth Fund and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, has released Better to Best: Value-Driving Elements of the PCMH and ACO. The report was funded by the Milbank Memorial Fund. To read the full report, click here.

AMIA Leaders Publish Informatics Paper in AAMC Journal

A group of AMIA leaders published a paper titled, Biomedical Informatics: Changing What Physicians Need to Know and How They Learn in the April edition of Academic Medicine, the peer-reviewed journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The paper discusses the explosive growth of biomedical complexity and calls for a shift in the paradigm of medical decision-making—from a focus on the power of an individual brain to the collective power of brain systems. The lead author is AMIA and ACMI leader William W. Stead, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Other authors include medical educators John R. Searle, PhD, of IEEE, and Henry E. Fessler, MD, of Hewlett Packard, along with AMIA and ACMI member Jack W. Smith, MD, PhD, of UT Health Science Center, and AMIA President and CEO Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD. To read the full article, click here.

VA Announces VAi2 Innovation Competition

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the VAi2 Innovation Competitions, designed to stimulate the most innovative, cutting-edge thinking from the private sector to solve the Department's most pressing challenges. The VA is interested in solutions from all types of organizations, including established leaders in industry, start-ups, non-profits, and academic institutions. Submissions are due by on April 15, 2011, 12:00 p.m. EDT. Five topics for the competition are:

Fully automated sterilization of medical equipment,
Leveraging telemedicine to provide audiology services to remote veterans,
Enhancements to and novel uses of VA's "Blue Button" personal health record,
Innovative prosthetic socket designs to improve fit and comfort of prosthetics, and
Self-management technologies for vocational rehabilitation.

For more information, click here.

$3 Million Competition to Create Predictive Algorithm

AMIA members are encouraged to consider the newest health prize announced by the Heritage Provider Network: the Heritage Health Prize, a $3 million competition to develop a breakthrough algorithm that can identify patients who will be admitted to the hospital within the next year, using historical claims data. The first installment of the competition is available now. Information will be released in three rounds by June 2011. Register now for the first round of information, which includes enough data for people to start trying out models. Deadline for this competition is April 3, 2013. For more information, click here.