As the nation begins its pilots of pioneer Accountable Care Organizations and shares more data for care coordination and population management, IT departments will be asked to make clinical records available to increasing numbers of loosely affiliated clinicians and staff. MORE

Healthcare organizations have avoided the use of "public cloud" because of HIPAA/HITECH privacy concerns, lack of breach indemnification/data integrity guarantees, and the unwillingness of many cloud providers to sign business associate agreements. MORE

While in Chicago recently, I was asked how we validated our quality measures when we moved from chart abstraction to automated computation of PRQS, Meaningful Use, Pioneer ACO, and Alternative Quality Contract measures via the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Quality Data Center (QDC). MORE

Recently, Alex Knapp wrote a brilliant article entitled "Five Leadership Lessons From James T. Kirk" in Forbes. For those of us who have watched every episode and can recite every line of dialog from memory, these 5 lessons are a great distillation of the series. MORE

The bottom line from every product I've used and everyone I've spoken with is that there is no current "perfect" EHR. We're still very early in the EHR maturity lifecycle. MORE

2011 was a hard year filled with Meaningful Use (including many upgrades to certified systems or self-certification), 5010 (the deadline for upgrading billing systems is January 1, 2012), accelerating compliance demands, new security threats, rapidly evolving technologies, and unprecedented demand for new projects driven by the consumerization of IT. MORE

The December HIT Standards Committee included a discussion of the work ahead for the next year based on the priorities we've heard from stakeholders. We'll have 10 in person and 2 telephonic meetings in 2012. MORE

Over the past decade, I've been closely involved in the evolution of clinical summary/transition of care content standards. MORE

When I began my career as a CIO in 1997, success was function of the basics - email delivery, network connectivity, and application functionality. In 2011, CIO success is much more complex to measure. MORE

I've written about the implications of staff bringing their own devices to the office instead of using corporate desktops and the challenges of keeping mobile devices secure. MORE

Wednesday evening, I emailed my staff about the passing of Steve Jobs. Many responded that they were genuinely sad. MORE

At BIDMC, I oversee 10,600 desktops and 2000 laptops. They are all locked down with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. MORE

On October 1, 2013, the entire US healthcare system will shift from ICD-9 to ICD-10. It will be one of the largest, most expensive and riskiest transitions that healthcare CIOs will experience in their careers, affecting every clinical and financial system. It's a kind of Y2K for healthcare. MORE

No one really knows what an Accountable Care Organization is, but many provider organizations want to be one. MORE

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting in my Harvard Clinical Research Institute office (I was CIO there from 2001-2007 as part of my Harvard Medical School CIO duties). A staff member ran into my office and told me that a plane had crashed into a World Trade Center Tower. MORE

Today I'm in Vermont, meeting with the stakeholders of Vermont Information Technology Leaders (VITL), the federally designated Regional Extension Center and Health Information Exchange for Vermont. MORE

I'm often asked why healthcare has been slow to automate its processes compared to other industries such as the airlines, shipping/logistics, or the financial services industry. MORE

Alaska faces many healthcare challenges given its large area (663,268 sq mi) and population of 710,231 residents. The geographical challenge of delivering such widely distributed healthcare makes it a natural location for telemedicine. MORE

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a strawman for embracing internet-based standards to support the provider directory services needed by health information exchanges. MORE

My trip to Scotland provided a remarkable opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences. MORE