nih

Case study:TX city creates diabetes monitoring program

Mon, 19 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

San Antonio (TX) Metropolitan Health District (SAMHD) has established a city registry to monitor the city's diabetics and improve their care. The District's officials plan to use the data to map the incidence of hyperglycemia, monitor diabetes cases and improve medical care to to diabetics. Apparently, there's some room for improvement in diabetes care there; In 2004, the death rate was 49.8 for every 100,000 people, double the national rate of 24.4. San Antonio's diabetes death rate is the second-highest of the 54 largest U.S. cities, behind only New Orleans, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

SAMHD will create the monitoring program using technology known as the Vermedx Diabetes Information System from Vermont Clinical Decision Support. Vermedx was developed during the course of a five-year clinical trial funded by the NIH. Vermedx will capture lab test from multiple labs and produce population summaries and report cards for regions, communities, providers and practice levels.

The pilot program, which began this month, will last 18 months. It will involve at least 50,000 active diabetic patients and four major labs. At the conclusion of the program, SAMHD will offer a summary or program results to the Texas legislature.

To learn more about the program:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece

NIH security breach includes data on U.S. Rep

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Now this must be a little embarrassing for officials at NIH. As it turns out, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) was one of 3,000 patients involved in a cardiac MRI study whose records were possibly lost when a laptop computer was stolen from the agency. Not only is the loss of records on a U.S. Representative a faux pas, Barton happens to be a founder of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, which focuses on educating other Congressional offices and staff members on individual privacy issues. Though the laptop was stolen in February, Barton learned of the breach a couple of weeks ago, and didn't know his data might be involved until late March. Now Barton and colleagues are asking HHS's Inspector General to investigate why the data wasn't encrypted on the laptop, and why the agency didn't notify people sooner of the breach.

To learn more about the data theft:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

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HHS backs genetics-driven, HIT-focused healthcare

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:01:38 -0400

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt unveiled a new initiative on Friday which would rely heavily on advanced health IT tools to individualize and improve patient care.
Leavitt's "Personalized Health Care" program will link genetic information with traditional health records on a large scale, in an effort to predict and thereby prevent the onset of many diseases. Leavitt has said that this effort will be one of his top priorities for the next two years.

Overall, HHS agencies like the NIH, FDA and CDC will spend $277 million on personalized health care efforts this year, and should up that spending to $352 million in fiscal 2008. To boost this effort, President Bush has included $15 million in funding in his 2008 budget to create a new electronic network linking together data repositories across the U.S., Leavitt noted. To make sure these efforts don't compromise privacy efforts--or expose consumers to discrimination--HHS is beginning a comprehensive review of how the aggregation of this information will impact individual consumers. It will also work with the American Health Information Community to develop health IT standards for including genetic data in EMRs.

To learn more about how this initiative is playing out across HHS:
- read HHS's press release
- check out this United Press International item
- review the HHS overview of the program

Related Articles:
VA to link genetic info to medical records. Report
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Universities create cardiac data grid

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:01:35 -0400

Three universities with biomedical research programs have teamed to create a grid supporting the exchange of cardiac illness data. The Cardiovascular Research Grid, which will link up cardiovascular researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego, is funded by an $8.5 million grant from the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. For the first portion of the project, the groups will develop software tools which will allow other researcher teams to become nodes on the grid. Eventually, participants will be able to share experimental data, analysis tools and computational models. The ultimate goal of the project is to speed the development of heart disease treatments by improving the way scientists share information.

For more about the project:
- read this Computerworld article
- see this Johns Hopkins press release

Feds plan $5B in HIT upgrades for '07

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:01:34 -0500

It's about time, guys. Federal agencies are placing a new emphasis on the power of IT to foster healthcare industry changes--budgeting nearly $5 billion for infrastructure upgrades and improved network connectivity. Agencies like HHS, the VA and the Department of Homeland Security will place a particular emphasis on EMR adoption and health data sharing next year. To get that done, they plan to consolidate data centers, hook up isolated systems and move some systems to component-based architectures, according to Gaithersburg, MD-based federal spending research firm fedXccel. The largest project HHS is contemplating next year seems to be a $72.3 million upgrade of CMS's MMA contracting system. Another standout is NIH, which has at least a dozen smaller projects on the table.

For more information on federal health IT plans:
- read this press release
- download this list of the top 30 HHS contracting opps for '07

Related Article:
VA revamping IT infrastructure. Article