The discussion of the Federal News Radio interview focused on how apps are vetted for use in the medical community. As of April 2013, the FDA has approved approximately 75 apps that comply with their recommendations for interoperability and security.

However, this is a far step away from accreditation from a third party organization.  We are in the incipient stages of generating standards and recognizing authorities to move the term from “approve” to the more stringent term “accredited.”

In studio, there were three perspectives weighing in on this process. Tom Martin, Manager of mHiMSS,  Dr. David Lee Scher, Director at Digital Health Technology Consultant at DLS Healthcare Consulting, and Tom Leary, Vice President of Government Relations at HiMSS.

Here is a brief summary of their commentary:

Tom Martin (left) and Tom Leary (right) at WFED 1500 AM.

HiMSS:  Tom Leary focuses on policy matters that the FDA would use to deploy a process for accreditation. He states that there are an estimated 40,000 apps floating around the Internet, thousands of them come under the general category of healthcare.  It’s one thing to download an app to count steps like Fitbit, it is quite another for an app that a physician may use to assist in a diagnosis.

mHiMSS:  Tom Martin is completing a PhD with a focus on mobile health apps, and has current information regarding state-of-the-art mobile apps. Tom outlines the process that is involved in reviewing interoperability, privacy, and security. He details types of medical apps and efforts of organizations to establish standards in order to execute a reasonable approach to accrediting apps for medical use.

DLS Healthcare Consulting:  When you have a medical doctor in the room the discussion always takes an interesting turn.  Dr. Scher was asked about an app that a physician could attach to the phone in order to perform an emergency ECG (electrocardiogram).  After the question, Dr. Scher pulled out a case that could be attached to his iPhone which would allow a physician to look at the ECG of a patient in an emergency situation.

Dr. Scher gave an overview of that a company called Happtique is doing in the area of developing standards for mobile apps.  Both HiMSS and the mHiMSS communities are interested in participating in the discussion that will impact the professional lives of their members.

ARMATURE offers a suite of web-based tools for accreditation management, compliance to standards, conformity assessment, risk management, and quality assurance. Organizations use ARMATURE software to establish and adhere to standards and best practices, audit the performance of their internal and external resources, and leverage the information they collect throughout their quality processes to make informed and correct decisions. Contact ARMATURE to learn more.

ARMATURE’s John Gilroy hosts a weekly radio show on Federal News Radio, appears regularly as “The Computer Guy” on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and is an experienced platform speaker. Read thought-provoking comments on the technology industry at John’s blog and follow John on Twitter @RayGilray.

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Lee Barrett from EHNAC has been involved in the world of electronic data exchange for more than twenty five years.  During the interview he elucidated upon the evolution of electronic data standards and its role in cutting the cost of healthcare.

Moving paper records to an electronic format allows for easy transferring of medical information, reducing duplicate tests, eliminating fraudulent claims, and streamlining the payment process.  This seemingly simple proposition becomes difficult when one attempts to come up with a standard way to transfer the wide range of medical information under the strictures of privacy initiatives like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

WEDI

Lee begins the interview by talking about his involvement in the early stages of developing standards for data exchange.  He was one of the technology leaders who helped form WEDI (Workgroup for Electronic Data Exchange).  These early years saw hundreds of organizations with proprietary methods of exchange who would not agree on any third party standard.

When HIPAA was initially introduced in 1996, it precipitated a reduction in the resistance to establishing standard ways to send information between hospitals, physicians, reference laboratories, and other organizations involved in healthcare.

THE BIG SIX 

Lee Barrett, EHNAC

These early years lead to EHNAC developing over one hundred criteria that they use to accredit organizations that seek to electronically transfer health information.  One may generalize by talking about six main areas of importance:

1. Privacy
2. Technical capability
3. Business practice
4. Resources
5. Security
6. HIPAA compliance

A two year accreditation can be given to anyone from providers to payers.  There is a time cap to the compliance because regulations change constantly.  Lee Barrett notes that in January of 2014, HIPAA will be changed.  One aspect of the change is it will mandate that compliant parties will have to announce breaches in privacy guidelines.

EXCHANGES

Healthcare IT is a world filled with confusing names, abbreviations, and acronyms.  Lee sheds some light on some these.  The Health Information Exchange is a central way to allow different software to connect in different places.  A Health Insurance Exchange is really a marketplace for individuals to learn about insurance coverage and costs.

In the February 5, 2013 edition of The Huffington Post, they estimate that the federal government will spend $885 billion in healthcare IT.  Organizations like EHNAC can assure that data will be transferred in a secure and safe manner, reducing costs and increasing patient engagement to improve the health of all Americans.

ARMATURE offers a suite of web-based products and services for accreditation management, compliance to standards, risk assessment, and quality assurance.

Please contact me if your accrediting organization would like to share insight and knowledge with a federal and regulatory audience by appearing on Federal News Radio. To learn more about accreditation systems, schedule a demo with ARMATURE today!

ARMATURE’s John Gilroy hosts a weekly radio show on Federal News Radio, appears regularly as “The Computer Guy” on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and is an experienced platform speaker. Read thought-provoking comments on the technology industry at John’s blog and follow John on Twitter @RayGilray.

The Federal News Radio interview with Phil Soloweszyk focuses on identity and access management in environments with thousands of seats and how it relates directly to a federal landscape.  Large organizations, federal or otherwise, tend to have disparate large systems that are hard to integrate and even harder to develop access policies that work with large amounts of people.

Phillip Soloweszyk, Quest Software

There are many aspects of interoperability that can be addressed, for the purposes of this discussion we expanded upon OMB mandates that collaborate with respect to using HSPD-12. During the interview, Phil expounds upon the origins of HSPD-12 in 2004, understanding how it works with the FIPS 201 NIST standard that was released a year later.

Many federal agencies have spent the past decade developing in silos that are great for access control.  The problem arises when mandates originate from the OMB that encourages collaboration and information sharing.  The discussion with Phil Soloweszyk gives some options for agencies that are looking for insight on accommodating OMB recommendations.

ARMATURE offers a suite of web-based data management tools for compliance to standards, conformity assessment, risk management, accreditation and quality assurance. Organizations use ARMATURE software to establish and adhere to standards and best practices, audit the performance of their internal and external resources, and leverage the information they collect throughout their quality processes to make informed and correct decisions. Contact ARMATURE to learn more.

ARMATURE’s John Gilroy hosts a weekly radio show on Federal News Radio, appears regularly as “The Computer Guy” on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and is an experienced platform speaker. Read thought-provoking comments on the technology industry at John’s blog and follow John on Twitter @RayGilray.

The interview on Federal News Radio with Bill Cull focused on big data and in particular SEIM (Security information Event Management).  Traditional SIEM products automate the arduous task of log management.

Bill Cull in studio at WFED 1500 AM.

Infrastructure has changed so much in the past five years that the traditional products would be overwhelmed with systems with terabytes of data.  Some organizations offer products that take a look at databases in a non-linear fashion – for an ad hoc query based on a security event.  Bill’s company has a set of offerings that assist in classic SEIM and bridge the gap to more umbrella type systems that integrate real time log management and non-linear queries of databases.

Splunk products go beyond traditional classification that handle real-time incidents, can be used for specific queries, or just to manage a specific application.

During the discussion, Bill compares several approaches and offerings for tackling “big data”:

1. A base offering. It resides on a server and provides application management, virtualization assistance, and SEIM.
2. Cloud solution. The same basic capabilities as the server based version, but available remotely and on virtual servers.
3. A new angle.  A product designed to link both structured and machine data to a specific database.
4. Sandy produced millions of Tweets.  It would be almost impossible to analyze this volume of shared information.  Splunk assembled a tool that categorizes tweets in order to determine problems.

If you have further interest in this topic, you may want to attend the Splunk live event on May 16, 2013.  Last year an estimated 600 people attended to learn best practices and technology implementations for addressing big data concerns.

ARMATURE is a leading provider of web-based products and services for conformity assessment, risk management, compliance to standards, accreditation and quality assurance. ARMATURE delivers innovative online tools to increase process efficiency by automating and streamlining data capture, rules processing, and analysis activities. Contact ARMATURE to learn more.

ARMATURE’s John Gilroy hosts a weekly radio show on Federal News Radio, appears regularly as “The Computer Guy” on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and is an experienced platform speaker. Read thought-provoking comments on the technology industry at John’s blog and follow John on Twitter @RayGilray.