John Halamka, CareGroup Health System, Life as a Healthcare CIO
John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is CIO of the CareGroup Health System, CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of NEHEN, CEO of the MA-SHARE RHIO, Chair of HITSP, and a practicing emergency physician. He blogs at Life as a Healthcare CIO.
Cool Technology of the Week: Quest Gazelle
November 5, 2010
As readers of my blog know, I'm passionate about mobile technology.
I believe that iPhone/Android smartphones, iPod Touch, and the iPad, Playbook, Galaxy, and Streak will become the platforms for healthcare. Desktops with complex operating systems, antivirus, and heavy "thick client" applications will disappear. Ray Ozzie's farewell message to Microsoft describes a post-PC world.
As we think about EHRs in the post-PC world, I can envision an App Store for modular EHR components. The Harvard SHARP grant SMArt team is working on this idea.
What about a healthcare App Store for patients that brings the PHR to the iPhone/iPod/iPad/Android, etc.
Last week, Quest introduced Gazelle which brings powerful PHR functionality to smart phones. It's my cool technology of the week.
Gazelle includes automated lab results and educational materials, medication list, immunization list, allergy list, medical contacts, in case of emergency information - everything you need to share your medical records in an emergency.
CLIA rules complicated that delivery of lab data directly to patients, but new revisions to regulations have made this easier.
A lifetime medical record with educational materials on smartphones - that's cool.
John Halamka, MD blogs regularly at Life as a Healthcare CIO.
mk01 say: For people who use their
For people who use their personal smartphone to access the e-mail, calendaring and other mobile services of their employer, there are technical hooks that the IT department of the employer can use to work with the information on the smartphone. These capabilities are understood by the IT teams, although they seem to be a surprise to many end-users.
There have been reported cases of employee's personal phones being wiped out when the IT people at their employer accidentally flip that switch for the wrong employee.
Given these scenarios, I would be concerned about the privacy of lab test results being available to the employer for a person who uses this application. The application states the data can be kept confidential, but how is that done?