e-News August 25, 2011

August 25, 2011

August 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 31


AMIA Education/Events Deadline Extended for Submissions to Nursing Informatics Congress Kansas University’s 10X10 Aims to Update HIT Skills CMIOs, CNIOs Learn to Navigate EHRs at CMIO Boot Camp	Policy & Government Affairs AMIA Seeks Input from Members on ONC Solicitations for Comment NIH Common Fund Seeks Ideas in Informatics eMERGE Network Moves Closer to Tailored Treatments Based on Patients' Genomic Information Government Calls for Abstracts on Quality Improvement Initiatives IOM Pitches National System for EHR-based Disease Tracking HHS Wants App to Turn Facebook Friends into Disaster Lifelines	Member News Free Webinar on Decision Support AMIA Member Creates Program to Match Symptoms with New Treatments JAMIA Taps Into Social Media Outlets Calendar

Deadline Extended for Submissions to Nursing Informatics Congress

The deadline for submitting papers, poster abstracts and proposals to the 11th International Congress on Nursing Informatics (NI 2012) in Montreal, Canada, has been extended to Monday, Sept. 12, to accommodate national holidays in Canada and the United States. The Congress, scheduled for June 23-27, 2012, is a triennial event during which nurses generate and share information, knowledge and research; examine the impact of health IT on their profession; and gain insight into upcoming priorities and future directions in the expanding HIT-enabled environment they work in. Please share news of the new September submission deadline to teams of nurses within your own professional network. The Scientific Program Committee is eagerly awaiting an onslaught of submissions that reflect the broad array of research and workflow nurses are involved in. Learn more at www.ni2012.org/.

Kansas University’s 10X10 Aims to Update HIT Skills

Members interested in sharpening their HIT skills should consider signing up for AMIA’s 10 X 10 course at Kansas University Medical Center. The course, which begins Monday, Aug. 29, provides a broad survey of health informatics focused on five themes: health informatics foundations; clinical decision support; human/organizational factors; public health informatics; and current issues in health informatics, including best practices. Participants will develop and demonstrate a practical, innovative small-group information technology (IT) project and present the project in a face-to-face session at the Fall Symposium. The course's targeted audience is clinicians, public health practitioners and researchers, IT professionals, and others interested in the field of health informatics. Register now and become a part of KUMC’s third 10x10 offering.

Also available through the 10x10 program:

• University of Minnesota School of Nursing 10x10 course begins Oct. 10. To view course descriptions, 10x10 course dates, or to register, please visit: www.amia.org/education/10x10-courses.

CMIOs, CNIOs Learn to Navigate EHRs at CMIO Boot Camp

Top ranking instructors led by co-chairs Gilad J. Kuperman, director for quality informatics at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, and Paul Tang, Vice President, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF), will educate attendees at AMIA’s CMIO Boot Camp Sept. 7-10, in Houston. This intensive program for CMIOs and CNIOs addresses challenges clinicians face in selecting and implementing EHR systems. The Boot Camp provides briefing material, best practices, experiential knowledge and expertise to support clinical leaders as they prepare to lead health delivery organizations to meaningful use of electronic health records.

The course is limited to 50 participants. CME is offered. To register, click here or to view the list of faculty and their qualifications, click here.

AMIA Seeks Input from Members on ONC Solicitations for Comment

AMIA is seeking broad comment for three government notices of proposed rulemaking. They include:

• Comment on the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) proposed rulemaking on the Metadata Standards recommended to it by the HIT Standards Committee.

• The Human Subjects Research Protections: Enhancing Protections for Research Subjects and Reducing Burden, Delay, and Ambiguity for Investigators. DHHS is contemplating various ways of enhancing the regulations overseeing research on human subjects. Before making changes to the regulations – which have been in place since 1991and are often referred to as the Common Rule – the government is seeking the public’s input on an array of issues related to the ethics, safety, and oversight of human research. The proposed changes are designed to strengthen protections for human research subjects.

• Food and Drug Administration's (FDA’s) Proposed Guidance for Mobile Medical Applications. AMIA is seeking input to draft guidance that, when finalized, will represent the FDA’s current thinking on this topic.

To read more about this topic and to access a full Draft Guidance click here.

NIH Common Fund Seeks Ideas in Informatics

The National Institutes of Health Common Fund is soliciting comments about informatics research problems for potential investment in 2013. This is an opportunity to give informatics research problems greater visibility at NIH, both independently and as components of other areas. For more information, click here.

eMERGE Network Moves Closer to Tailored Treatments Based on Patients' Genomic Information

Researchers in the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network will receive $25 million over the next four years to demonstrate that patients' genomic information linked to disease characteristics and symptoms in their electronic medical records can be used to improve their care. The grants are from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The eMERGE network will share its data through the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGAP) at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gap. For more information about the eMERGE network, please go to www.genome.gov/27540473. Additional information about NHGRI can be found at www.genome.gov/

Government Calls for Abstracts on Quality Improvement Initiatives

The federal government has partnered with the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (JHCPU) to publish a specially themed issue that addresses quality improvement initiatives related to clinical care outcomes, health systems delivery, organizational efficiencies, financing models, reduction of medical errors, improvement of patient safety, and communications. Interested parties need to submit an abstract of 500 words or less which includes: 1) author name(s) and affiliation(s); 2) contact information for the corresponding author; 3) proposed title; and 4) type of manuscript and e-mail (original paper, commentary, brief communication, report from the field, column, or review) by Sept. 1, 2011 to OHITQPapers@hrsa.gov and addressed to: Ahmed Calvo, MD, MPH, senior guest editor. Government offices involved are the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health (NIMHD/NIH).

IOM Pitches National System for EHR-Based Disease Tracking

An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a national system that leverages EHRs and other patient-based data to help monitor chronic conditions. Although EHRs and other data sources will pose privacy concerns and other barriers, "the potential is great that some, if not all, of them may complement and extend chronic disease surveillance efforts," the report notes.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a draft document to tackle the increasing challenge of maintaining confidentiality and the integrity of personally identifiable information by adding privacy controls to the catalog of security controls used to protect federal information and information systems.

The public comment period for this appendix runs through Sept. 2. The publication may be found by clicking here.

HHS Wants App to Turn Facebook Friends Into Disaster Lifelines

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering a $10,000 prize for creating the best app using Facebook to boost preparedness. The goal is to provide actionable steps for Facebook users to help them increase their personal and community preparedness, with the goal of protecting public health and increasing community resilience following a disaster, according to an Aug. 10 notice in the Federal Register. The notice refers to disasters in a general fashion, not specifically public health-related disasters. Three winning teams will receive prizes of $10,000, $5,000 or $1,000.

The submission period for initial entries begins at 12:01 am EDT, Aug. 15, and ends 11:59 pm, EDT, Sept. 15. For more information click here and click here.

Free Webinar on Decision Support

AMIA and Philips Healthcare are holding a free webinar, “Decision Support and the Soul of a (nearly perfect) Machine,” at 11 am (EDT), Wednesday, Aug. 31. It will be presented by Dr. Joe Frassica, Philips’ chief medical information officer and senior consultant at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

Join this hour-long webinar to examine the limits of human perception and cognition, which successful decision support systems seek to augment. Also outlined will be some of the strengths of the human brain, which differentiate it from the machines that seek to support it. We will review the underpinnings of successful decision-support systems with reference to knowledge developed in other high-stress environments. Also outlined will be an expanded definition of clinical decision support in the context of work on predictive algorithms, which are aimed at augmenting the clinical intuition of bedside caregivers. To register for this free event, click here.

AMIA Member Creates Program to Match Symptoms with New Treatments

AMIA member Atul Butte, an associate professor of systems medicine in pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, and his team of scientists published two articles in Science Translational Medicine that describe the group’s success in developing a computer program that matches symptoms of disease with drugs, yielding about 1,000 potential new treatments. The papers are available online for subscribers of Science. The abstract can be viewed free of charge. Dr. Butte and his team’s research wwere covered by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BIO-IT and Stanford University. To view the coverage on the Stanford website, click here.

JAMIA Taps Into Social Media Outlets

Members interested in using social media to keep up with news in JAMIA can now “follow” or become a “fan” of the publication.

JAMIA’s Twitter account is called “JMedInformatics,” and currently has more than 500 followers. An automatic “tweet” will be sent whenever an editor’s choice article is released or a blog post is published. To become a follower, sign up at Twitter.

JAMIA also has added a Facebook account where members can join as a fan and receive up-to-date information. To become a fan, visit the JAMIA page on Facebook and click “like.”

And while you’re there, “like” AMIA too! Members can subscribe to JAMIA’s e-mail alerts online by clicking here.