The health IT community should allow reviews and comparisons of EHR products if it wants to avoid formal regulation by the FDA, according to a new discussion paper from the Institute of Medicine, Comparative User Experiences of Health IT Products: How User Experiences Would Be Reported and Used.​

Working on health information exchange led Paul Tuten, PhD, senior consultant at the State HIE Program of the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT (ONC), to quickly recognize that trust and, by extension, privacy and security, is only as good as the weakest link in the chain of exchange. “Getting these issues right is very important.” Tuten was one of several speakers that participated in the National eHealth Collaborative’s program Sept. 19 on Increasing Medical Record Security.​​​

What strikes me while reviewing the news we’ve published this week is the sheer volume. This indicates a lot of activity on the health IT front, mostly for the good.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services is informing approximately 2,500 clients by letter of a possible employee email account breach that may have resulted in the unintentional release of information held by the Cabinet’s Department for Community Based Services.

EHRs would benefit if developers had the ability to create applications for them. Several organizations are working to build the open architecture to allow it, according to the panelists of a Sept. 15 presentation at the 2012 Medicine 2.0 conference.

The board of directors of the Kansas health information exchange (KHIE) has voted to dissolve itself and turn its operation over to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, according to a report from the Kansas Health Institute.

An online tool to help local public health officials track health concerns in real time in their communities using Twitter is now available.

BOSTONDespite a growing body of evidence suggesting that patients can make valuable contributions to their healthcare, they are too infrequently asked and are often discouraged from participating, according to the panelists of a Sept. 15 presentation at the 2012 Medicine 2.0 Congress.