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.
Information Technology and the H1N1 Virus
May 4, 2009
At BIDMC, our Infection Control staff have sent out daily updates about the H1N1 Virus, our process changes to protect patients/staff, and our planning for future activities if the infection escalates.
There are many things that IT can do to support the hospital and the country during this outbreak. Here are five projects we've implemented.
1. Support CDC's Biosense
Every day, BIDMC electronically sends 4000 data elements to the Centers for Disease Control using the HITSP Biosurveillance standards. Patients are not identified - no names, MRN’s or addresses are sent. Birthdays are month and year only. Here are the data elements we send:
Inpatients
ADT information – a message that there was an admission, discharge or transfer with date and time
Diagnosis
Procedures
Pharmacy orders
Daily census
Emergency Department Visits
Visit information
Acuity
Diagnosis
Procedures
Pharmacy orders
Patient instructions
Outpatient Visits
Visit information
Diagnosis
All patients
Microbiology orders and results (including viral studies)
Radiology orders and results
The CDC uses this to track outbreaks and prioritize resource allocation.
2. Build an intranet site to educate faculty and staff
We've supported our Infection Control staff with template-based content management tools and launched "H1N1 Central". In this single intranet site we link together our institutional polices, CDC reports, local news, and best practices.
