e-News March 31, 2011

March 31, 2011

March 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 13


AMIA Education/Events CMIO Boot Camp to be Offered Fall 2011 Follow PHI 2011 on Twitter 10 X 10 Introduces New Professionals to Biomedical Informatics	Policy & Government Affairs ONC Seeks Comments on Federal Health IT Strategic Plan CDC Releases Report on Public Health Preparedness Capabilities New IOM Reports on Clinical Practice Guideline Standards NIST Workshop on Long-term Preservation & Management of EHRs New Initiative to Examine Financial Impact of Breached Patient Information HRSA Webinar on Overcoming Health IT Workforce Challenges Calendar	Member News Corporate Member Provides Clinical Reference Resources to Japan Earthquake Relief GE Healthcare Announces New Clinical Research Management Solution Readers Name AMIA Leaders as Top Picks for ONC Coordinator

CMIO Boot Camp to be Offered Fall 2011

AMIA’s four-day CMIO Boot Camp returns this fall for the third offering of the executive leadership program for CMIOs. This immersion course on Meaningful Use of EHRs, is designed to bring Chief Medical Information Officers to a forum that focuses on best practices and provides close interaction with leaders at the forefront of the informatics profession. The course also provides 20.25 Category 1 CME credit hours. This education event will be held at the Houstonian Hotel and Spa, Houston, Sept. 7-10. Click here to browse more information about this unique learning opportunity.

Follow PHI 2011 on Twitter

Follow AMIA and PHI 2011 on Twitter, and use #PHI2011 while tweeting about this important meeting that will develop the next informatics agenda in public health, in coordination with six collaborating organizations actively engaged in public health. The early registration deadline is April 7. For more information on PHI 2011, click here.

10 X 10 Introduces New Professionals to Biomedical Informatics

Registration is now open for Nova Southeastern University’s “Survey of Biomedical Informatics,” online interactive course. The course will introduce students to the use of computers for processing, organizing, retrieving, and utilizing biomedical information at the molecular, biological system, clinical and healthcare organization levels. The 10x10 course is suitable for individuals with backgrounds in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, administration, information technology, computer science, and other allied sciences. The course also will provide a stepping stone for individuals wishing to further their education and/or career development in the field of biomedical informatics. This course begins May 16. The deadline to register is May 10. For more information, click here.

Also available for registration:

10x10 with UMN School of Nursing – begins April 11.
10x10 with OHSU – begins April 27.
10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American Dietetic Association – begins April 13.
10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians – begins June 29.
10x10 with University of Illinois Chicago – begins May 27; registration deadline is May 6.
10x10 with Stanford University – begins June 21; registration deadline is July 1.

For information on the complete roster of 10 X 10 courses, visit www.amia.org/e-learning.

ONC Seeks Comments on Federal Health IT Strategic Plan

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has released a draft Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2011 – 2015 for public comment. The plan reflects ONC's strategy for coordinating the public and private sectors to realize Congress’ and the Administration's health IT agenda for improving the quality, efficiency, safety and patient-centeredness of health care. The plan, originally published in 2008, has been updated to take into account the rapidly changing landscape of health IT. It also includes related policy changes over the past two years, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Public Comment period for the plan is now open, and comments must be submitted via the Federal Health IT Buzz Blog by Friday, April 22, 2011. For more information on the full plan, click here.

CDC Releases Report on Public Health Preparedness Capabilities

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a new report defining a set of public health preparedness capabilities to assist state and local health departments with their strategic planning. The report, Public Health Preparedness Capabilities: National Standards for State and Local Planning, details 15 capabilities to serve as national public health preparedness standards. The content is based on evidence-informed documents, relevant preparedness literature, and subject matter expertise gathered from across the federal government and the state and local practice community. For more information, click here.

New IOM Reports on Clinical Practice Guideline Standards

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently issued two reports aimed at (1) providing an objective and consistent framework for clinical practice guidelines and (2) standardizing systematic reviews for reliable, evidence-based comparisons of health interventions. The first report, Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust, contains eight standards for developing rigorous, trustworthy clinical practice guidelines. The second report, Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews, contains standards that address the systematic review process, synthesizing the findings and assessing the overall quality of the body of evidence, and producing the final review report. Both reports were called for in the Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.

NIST Workshop on Long-term Preservation & Management of EHRs

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is convening a workshop to investigate how to preserve and provide access to electronic clinical data for a sufficiently long period of time to maximize value to patient, caretaker, and scientist. Workshop participants will work to ascertain current practices for long-term preservation and lifecycle management of EHRs, including an interoperability framework which supports a wide variety of data types, data formats/records, and data delivery mechanisms, while providing technology-independent infrastructure to acquire, store, search, retrieve, migrate, replicate, and distribute EHRs over time. The meeting occurs April 5-6, 2011, at the NIH/National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. For more information, click here.

New Initiative to Examine Financial Impact of Breached Patient Information

A new project, led by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in partnership with the Shared Assessments Program, was launched recently to explore the financial impact of unauthorized access to protected health information. The goal for the project is to identify frameworks for determining the economic impact of any disclosure or breach of protected patient data. For more information, click here.

HRSA Webinar on Overcoming Health IT Workforce Challenges

Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of HIT & Quality is holding a webinar this week featuring three expert speakers who will discuss health IT workforce challenges and solutions in overcoming them. Training, development, and retention of the workforce are critical challenges for successfully implementing and sustaining a health information technology (IT) system in health centers and critical access hospitals. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 150,000 health IT professionals will be needed in the future for the nation to successfully become meaningful users of health IT systems. The webinar, Health IT Workforce Training Programs for the Safety Net Community, is April 1, 2 p.m. ET. For more information about the webinar, click here.

Corporate Member Provides Clinical Reference Resources to Japan Earthquake Relief

AMIA Corporate Partner, Elsevier, is providing free access to its online clinical reference tools to all IPs originating from Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Free access will be available through April 2011. This effort is part of a new initiative to provide easily accessible focused resources in response to world events that present difficult medical challenges. Elsevier has also added several resource pages about Radiation Sickness to better help those on the ground during this emergency. Elsevier is working in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine Emergency Access Initiative. This initiative was proposed in the aftermath of 9/11 and its first real use was in response to last year's earthquake in Haiti. For more information about Elsevier’s relief efforts, click here.

GE Healthcare Announces New Clinical Research Management Solution

AMIA Corporate Partner GE Healthcare, recently announced their newest clinical research management tool: Centricity Research is designed to help improve the efficiency of clinical research studies, enterprise-wide, by driving better management of treatment plans, processes, and protocols while supporting research billing compliance. For more information, click here.

Readers Name AMIA Leaders as Top Picks for ONC Coordinator

Modern Healthcare asked its readers to name their their top choices for Dr. David Blumenthal’s successor, who will head the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS. Among the top choices are several AMIA members! Among them are AMIA leaders Marc Chasin, John Halamka, and Bill Hersh, the popular instructor of AMIA’s in-demand 10x10 course, an introduction to biomedical and health informatics. To read the full article, click here.