May 15th through May 18th:

• CCR Product Compatibility List — AAFP Center for Health Information Technology - Adoption list of CCR - not up to date, but gives a glimpse of who has been involved.
• Montana Healthshare - Montana organization to use CCR to improve population health
• Solventus CEND/PHR - A reference implementation of a PHR using CCD, developed by Stephen Waldren, MD and David Kibbe, MD
• PDF Healthcare - A technology platform for enclosing historical documents - can contain a CCR
• SourceForge.net: CCR Acceleration Resources Project - The XSLT transofrm from XML -> HTML for CCR
• www.ccrstandard.com - Continuity of Care Record (CCR)Standard — Resource Site _uacct = “UA-2242673-1″; urchinTracker(); - Home base for CCR
• “I hope that some day you get your wish” - "Medicine has a 100% failure rate" - a discussion of physicians in information technology.
• The WETA Guide to Fine Dining | WETA TV 26 - A nice series on DC treasures
• The Health Care Blog: PODCAST/CONSUMERS/TECH: Interview with Joseph Kvedar, Partners’ Connected Health guru - Information about ConnectedHealth and the EMC pilot they are doing

The quote in the title of the post is from David Kibbe, MD, MBA, who co-taught a workshop on the ASTM Continuity of Care Record Standard with Steven Waldren, MD, MS, in conjunction with the TEPR Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I took the workshop on behalf of my work with the Calfornia Healthcare Foundation to look at creating a connectivity ecosystem for patients, families, and health stakeholders in a community, which I’ve started to blog about here.

It was a good workshop, with a nice step-through of the CCR standard, which for me was fairly straightforward to follow. Here’s a screenshot of the XML schema of a sample (test) CCR XML file. If you’re medically inclined, you’ll see that it’s an XML representation of a prednisone taper. I didn’t put this XML file together, but I consider this a sort of “hello, world” - to show that a clinical summary can be represented with a human and machine-readable file.

CCR is figuring into many well publicized Health 2.0 applications and I am of course a fan of anything that has its genesis in engaging patients in their care.

• Topics - e-Visits @ TransforMED - Transforming Medical Practices - Article on whether the tipping point has been reached for e-visits
• WordPress Plugin: SIMILE Timeline at freshlabs journal - Nice visualization tool
• Doctor-Patient ‘Web Visits’ Spur Privacy Concerns : NPR - Should the American Medical Association always present the contrarian view around patient access? I don’t agree with the implication that cell phone / telephone is “most secure.” Anyone who has been in an airport recently would probably agree.
• WSJ.com/Harris Interactive Study Asks: Are There Fair and Reliable Ways to Assess Healthcare Quality? - Patients are saying that having an EHR is a “fair” assessment of quality
• Expansion of CCHIT Certification for 2009 (PDF Presentation) - Overview of CCHIT’s work to date and future strategy. Disclaimer: I am on the Foundations Workgroup
• Meet the Press — Robert Scoble — The Blogosphere | Fast Company - How Tim Ferriss used the blogosphere to his advantage
• News - Diversity gap found among state’s doctors - sacbee.com - “Not just a civil rights issue, a public health issue”
• YouTube - Microsoft Surface Parody - Why not use the device the size of a small car? The peril and promise of on demand video in shaping your message.

January 12th through January 13th:

• Prometheus Payment, Inc. - A new payment model that supports outcomes, evidence-based care, and transparency
• The music industry | From major to minor | Economist.com - “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,”…Now it may be too late.
• Coverity Incorporated Scan - Company working with the US Govt to harden open source code for use by agencies including Homeland Security. They are finding bugs and the bugs are being fixed.
• Online Real Estate Sites Work To Get A Listing Standard - Another industry that is seeing the benefits of standards, and the challenges of disruption
• Gone Indie ? Thought Palace - Interesting insight on the work environment at Apple. LEAN production? You decide. I will say, though, that even though Apple is not embracing Web 2.0 like other companies are, I have solved many problems using their hosted discussions. These actually work well on Apple’s site I think because they do a great job of leveraging their loyal customer base. Yet another blog “goodbye” to an employer.
• Lean Manufacturing Blog: 1 Hour Kaizen - Excellent template and approach to small improvements. Just takes an hour. Can we have physicians shadowing nurses and vice versa?

PCHIT links for December 24th:

• Life as a Healthcare CIO: Standards for Personal Health Records - To prove a point about portability, John Halamka, MD, posts his medical record on his blog, in unstructured and structured formats.
• Health Privacy - Health Privacy 101 - HPP Releases Best Practices for Employers Offering PHRs. A good primer on PHR practices for employers.

PCHIT links for November 9th through November 13th:

• JAMA: Soliciting the Patient’s Agenda: Have We Improved?, January 20, 1999, Marvel et al. 281 (3): 283 - Data often cited and here’s the source: patients redirected an average of 23 seconds while providing their history.
• The Center For Health Design Research - Pebble Project - Center for Health Design supports evidence based design of health environments. Have they done work in PHR/EHR enabled institutions?
• Life as a Healthcare CIO: Personal Health Records - John Halamka, MD, supports the idea that PHR adoption is not a technology issue. Consistent with my findings on our recent trip to Boston.
• A Model for Health Care That Pays for Quality - New York Times - NYT Reports on Patient Centered Primary Care Model promoted by ACP, IBM, and others
• E.H.R. Home - HL7 announces balloting for PHR standards