Mayo Clinic Life Sciences System

David Snow, Mayo Amasses Mounds of Data, Wired, December 22 2003.

"The database, called the Mayo Clinic Life Sciences System … groups 4.4 million patients according to factors they have in common and includes both historical data and comprehensive information on Mayo Clinic patients dating back to 1997…Health-care professionals look forward to the eventual addition of patients’ genetic information to databases like the MCLSS — a field known as clinical genomics — as a major advance in medicine. Among other things, such access would allow doctors to divine with great speed and accuracy what drugs have worked best on a certain type of person with a certain illness…Mayo Clinic database developers said they have no timeline for the inclusion of genetic data, but expect it will happen in the next two to five years."

The database is a collaboration between the Mayo Clinic and IBM Life Sciences, which earlier this year announced a collaboration with UCSF.  Read my post here.

January 8, 2004 | Filed Under electronic-health-records, genomic-data, pharmacogenomics-pharmacogenetics-pgx | Comments Off 

Interview: Molly Joel Coye

Mike Dougherty, LEADING QUESTIONS: Looking Down the Road, Health Leaders Magazine, Nov. 2003.

This article is an interview with Molly Joel Coye MD MPH, the founder and CEO of HealthTech.  Her comments contain no surprises and are a welcome reaffirmation of the excitement surrounding the health IT field.  First, her opinion about future trends in health technology:

"…increasing consumer demand will meet a truly exploding pipeline of clinical devices-both implanted and worn-that will be used to replace natural functions to support, function or aid in treatment as chronic disease takes its toll."

On the future of electronic patient record (EPR):

"The electronic patient record is one of the three or four components important in the next three to five years in IT. The first stage is development of regional platforms for data sharing. Regional platforms often begin with eligibility lookup, claims lookup and eventually claims processing, and progresses to clinical data sharing beginning with laboratory and pharmacy and working out from there. There’s a growing national awareness of the urgency of the need for better information in healthcare. If, in the next two years, most of the necessary clinical data standards are established, we will be entering a new era as vendors sell IT systems that are compatible with the standards. The use of the EMR should grow steadily over the next five to eight years, and ultimately will be the most important piece of the puzzle of advancing quality."

November 25, 2003 | Filed Under e-health, electronic-health-records, future-healthcare, health-it, personal-health-tech | Comments Off 

Health Information Infrastructure

Panel Suggests Electronic Health Records, Yahoo News, Nov. 20, 2003.

[T]he Institute of Medicine [here]…an arm of the National Academy of Sciences…is chartered by Congress to advise the government on medical matters.

To improve the use of electronic records, the institute recommended that the government help create data standards for the secure collection, storage and dissemination of medical information electronically.

That would form the basis for a network that would allow widespread exchange of critical health information, said the independent group, which advises the government on medical issues.

The report urges the government to model the system after the airline industry’s air traffic and weather information systems.

This recommendation is contained in a report published yesterday by the IOM entitled, "Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care."  (read it online for free).  It is one of many reports filed under the IOM’s Health Care Quality Initiative.

UPDATE: Bio-IT has posted an article on this report by the IOM:
Brian Reid, IOM Report: IT Key to Patient Safety Reform, Bio-IT World, 11/20/03.

November 21, 2003 | Filed Under electronic-health-records, health-it | Comments Off 

Health Informatics

Bio-IT World has a series of three new articles entitled "Strategic Insights: HEALTH INFORMATICS":

KATHY ORDOÑEZ, Targeted Medicine via Molecular Diagnostics. Bio-IT World, Nov. 14, 2003.

JEFF AUGEN, Making Information-Based Medicine Work. Bio-IT World, Nov. 14, 2003.

AMNON SHABO, Integrated EHR: The Final Frontier. Bio-IT World, Nov. 14, 2003.

November 16, 2003 | Filed Under electronic-health-records, health-it | Comments Off 

EHRs and Family Doctors

Brian Reid, AAFP Nabs EHR Discounts, Ditches Open-Source Initiative. Health-IT World, Nov. 13 2003.

November 13, 2003 | Filed Under electronic-health-records | Comments Off 

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