I’m sure many of you are recovering from the Super Bowl right now. I got exactly what I wanted from the Super Bowl: a great game. I didn’t care too much either way, but I am glad that I predicted the Giants to be the winners. Too bad I’m not a betting man. Although, I guess that’s the trick with betting….but I digress.

Time for my regular weekend round up of interesting things happening in the healthcare IT and EMR twittersphere. We’ve got some really interesting tweets this week. Here we go.

@NateOsit We also have a webinar of @eCollab12 for those that wont’ be able to make it to #HIMSS12.ecollab12.eventbrite.com #hitsm

— Leonard Kish (@leonardkish) February 3, 2012

When I created and posted my list of HIMSS 12 sessions, they hadn’t created the agenda for the eCollaboration Forum at HIMSS and so I couldn’t add any sessions. However, the eCollaboration Forum at HIMSS 12 agenda is up now, so check it out. I know there are a number of sessions I’m going to add from the forum. I also love that they have the online option linked in this tweet for those not attending HIMSS 2012.

Yes, stage 2 #meaningfuluse NPRM will be out before #HIMSS12. meaningfulhitnews.com/2012/01/30/yes… #healthIT #ONC #CMS #hitpol #EHR #EMR

— Neil Versel (@nversel) January 31, 2012

This is really important news. I think a lot of us are REALLY interested to see the final meaningful use stage 2 details. Good find by Neil Versel.

Speaking doctor-to-doctor(s) using healthcare social media bit.ly/wiqbyu #hcsm #hcsmeu

— H2Online (@H2Ohu) January 30, 2012

I’m sure we’re going to continue seeing the trend of more and more doctors gleaning value from engaging in social media. At a minimum doctors are going to start finding more and more new patients using social media including things like physician blogging. A well done practice website and social media effort is going to be really valuable for the doctor of the future.

3 reasons why you should start a blog for your hospital bit.ly/ypCE78 #hcsm #blogging

— Mark Ragan (@MarkRaganCEO) January 30, 2012

Yes, blogging will also help hospitals in a number of ways too. Social media can benefit hospitals, doctors, practices, etc.

@DonRosenthal Tablets are for content consumption. PCs are for content creation. Much more intellectual flexibility w/ PCs. #HITsm

— Erica V. Olenski (@TheGr8Chalupa) February 3, 2012

I was fascinated by this tweet. First because I wonder what changes will make tablets more than just great for content consumption. Second, the idea of PCs being more intellectually flexible.

RT @patientslikeme: “my healthcare data is not nearly as portable/accessible as my financial data.” @jeff_cole #hcsm

— Jacqueline Thong (@jacthong) January 30, 2012

I know there are reasons why financial data is more portable and accessible than healthcare data, but it still irks me that we haven’t overcome those reasons…yet!

Anyone that is part of the healthcare IT and EMR world has to realize that we’re in a really incredible time for healthcare IT and EMR. There’s has never been more energy, excitement and actual investment in the Healthcare IT world than there is now. If you don’t believe me, buy your ticket to Las Vegas and attend HIMSS 2012 and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean. I have a feeling that HIMSS Las Vegas is going to be bigger than ever with more money flowing as well.

Just to provide a few examples of what’s happening, the prominent IT investor Esther Dyson has invested in 20 Health IT investments. That’s a whole lot of investment in healthcare IT. She obviously sees some real opportunities available at this time in health IT.

Another recent announcement was the recent batch of 15 Rock Health Startup companies. This is just one of at least 3 or 4 health focused incubators out there. Plus, the latest batch of health IT startup companies from Rock Health even has Neil Versel singing their praises after a previous not so glowing review of the health startup incubator (or health accelerator if you prefer).

One other thing that is easy to underestimate is the value that the US government is putting on supporting healthcare innovation through entrepreneurship. Normally I’m as skeptical as anyone in putting any sort of faith in government to produce results. I still think they have their hands tied in a lot of things, but I give a lot of credit to Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and Farzad Mostashari for doing their very best to kick against the challenges of big government while enabling health entrepreneurs to be successful.

Priya Ramachandran wrote about an example of one initiative the government is putting forward to help entrepreneurs: Access to Public Health Data. Every time I hear someone talk about the data that’s available from these public repositories of health data, the entrepreneur inside of me kicks in with ideas on how to use that data for good.

It is a really tremendous time to be an entrepreneur in healthcare. I do think we still need a better platform for health IT startups to launch their products and get funding. I have a few ideas I’m working on in this regard. More on this in the future.

Today my inbox was flooded with people congratulating @techguy and @ehrandhit for being part of the Top #HITsm Contributors of 2011. It’s very kind of them to recognize both of my active Health IT Twitter accounts. Officially @techguy was in the Top Individual #HITsm Contributors and @ehrandhit was in the Top #HITsm Organizations. I think @ehrandhit could have gone in organizations or publications, but either way I appreciate the recognition.

I think the comment at the top of the list describes the awards quite well:

By no means is the following lists all-inclusive. It does, however, represent some fantastic #HITsm voices on Twitter who regularly participate in weekly #HITsm TweetChats and share valuable Health IT information.

I always have a bit of a challenge with “Awards.” However, I think that #HITsm made a really great choice when they decided that instead of saying that this list is the “Best” or some other sort of magnanimous statement about the authority of their list, they instead said that these are some quality and valuable voices in #HITsm. No doubt there are a lot of others out there.

For example, I’d have loved to see @nversel and @john_chilmark on the list as well. They don’t use the tag #HITsm that often, but they definitely discuss those topics often on their various social media outlets. There are quite a few others that I could include in this category as well.

One thing I loved about the Top #HITsm Contributor list was how many familiar faces made it on the list. The great part is that there are so many smart minds on the list and social media makes them completely open and available to you. Without social media I’d likely know very few of those people and would have missed out on the tremendous interactions I’ve had with them at many a conference.

Maybe next year I should work with HL7 Standards and make the announcement of the awards part of the New Media Meetup at HIMSS. Might be kind of cool to get to meet all the great people in person. Yes, social media isn’t just about online connections, but taking those connections offline as well. As I often say:

Social Media (and Twitter in particular) is about connecting people!

In true social media fashion, the list of winners is also available as an embed, so you’ll find the list of Top #HITsm Contributor Awards embedded below as well. Here’s to another great year of Social Media in Healthcare.

I remember when I first started blogging about EMR and health care IT about 5.5 years ago, I searched out whatever EMR and healthcare IT blogs I could find. The first three blogs that I can remember finding (and loving) were Neil Versel’s blog, Shahid’s Healthcare IT blog and Will Weider’s Candid CIO blog.

I loved reading Neil Versel’s blog because he was actually a professional journalist in the healthcare IT arena. I learned a lot by watching what he did. In fact, I think some of my writing style came from reading his blog. Along with his blog, Shahid provided HITsphere where I could see the posts from other bloggers. Plus, in the early days the traffic from HITsphere to my blog was really great. It’s hard to have a blog that no one reads. I loved the Candid CIO. Partially because the writing was so good and Will is a really smart guy. Partially because I was completely intrigued that the CIO of an organization was blogging. At that time I think I also aspired to be a CIO like Will. Funny how life changes and I prefer to be a blogger now. I’ll leave the stress of CIO to Will. I’m happy to say that all three of these bloggers are still wielding their blogging sword and I still enjoy reading their work.

Needless to say, the EMR and Healthcare IT blogging community has gotten much larger than it was 5.5 years ago when I started. Like many things, with that growth a lot of things have changed. Some for the good and some for the bad. One thing that I miss is all the interaction we use to have as bloggers. Certainly some of that interaction has moved to Twitter and other social media sites. However, I wish we had more interactions with bloggers like we use to do when there were only 5 of us out there.

I personally like to call it blog sparring. Basically, you take someone else’s post and provide the opposing perspective or at least you add to the conversation that they started. I love these types of interactions with other bloggers. Plus, I love the deep dive into a specific topic that happens when you do this type of blogging. As a reader, I think it’s fun to read the various blogger’s perspective on the topic.

So, on that note, I’m going to make the next week, Blog Sparring Week. I’m going to find interesting posts from some of the best EMR and healthcare IT bloggers out there and I’m going to write a post in response or in addition to the comments they made. This way, you’ll get to know some of the other interesting bloggers out there, but you’ll also get the chance to read some interesting in depth commentary.

Hopefully, the bloggers I write about will join in on the fun by either replying to my blog posts or blog sparring with other EMR and healthcare IT bloggers.

If you have posts you think I should consider, let me know in the comments.

Lately I’ve been posting a number of tweets in a sort of Sunday Tweet roundup. I think it’s been fun to highlight some short Healthcare IT and EMR related tweets that people might find interesting. With a little bit of commentary of my own (let me know if you disagree).

Today, I decided I’d just go with a small quote from a comment that Chris Paton made over on Neil Versel’s Meaningful Healthcare IT News. Here it is:

We’re a long way from getting rid of doctors but they might find their role changes from being repository of all knowledge to being a trusted communicator and carer.

I’d been trying to summarize this position in a coherent way and I think Chris hit it on the head. Not only the part about being a long way from getting rid of doctors, but his description of doctors not being the repository of all knowledge, but instead a trusted communicator and caregiver is interesting to consider. Not to mention it’s a much better way to describe the transition than I did in my previous post about the subject.

I’m sure like many of you, I was completely intrigued by the demonstration of the Watson computer competing against the best Jeopardy! stars. It was amazing to watch not only how Watson was able to come up with the answer, but also how quickly it was able to reach the correct answer.

The hype at the IBM booth at HIMSS was really strong since it had been announced that healthcare was one of the first places that IBM wanted to work on implementing the “Watson” technology (read more about the Watson Technology in Healthcare in this AP article). Although, I found the most interesting conversation about Watson in the Nuance booth when I was talking to Dr. Nick Van Terheyden. The idea of combining the Watson technology with the voice recognition and natural language processing technologies that Nuance has available makes for a really compelling product offering.

One of the keys in the AP article above and was also mentioned by Dr. Nick from Nuance was that the Watson technology in healthcare would be applied differently than it was on Jeopardy!. In healthcare it wouldn’t try and make the decision and provide the correct answer for you. Instead, the Watson technology would be about providing you a number of possible answers and the likelihood of that answer possibly being the issue.

Some of this takes me back to Neil Versel’s posts about Clinical Decision Support and doctors resistance to CDS. There’s no doubt that the Watson technology is another form of Clinical Decision Support, but there’s little about the Watson technology which takes power away from the doctor’s decision making. It certainly could have an influence on a doctor’s ability to provide care, but that’s a great thing. Not that I want doctors constantly second guessing themselves. Not that I want doctors relying solely on the information that Watson or some other related technology provides. It’s like most clinical tools. When used properly, they can provide a great benefit to the doctor using them. When used improperly, it can lead to issues. However, it’s quite clear that Watson technology does little to take away from the decision making of doctors. In fact, I’d say it empowers doctors to do what they do better.

Personally I’m very excited to see technologies like Watson implemented in healthcare. Plus, I think we’re just at the beginning of what will be possible with this type of computing.

In a recent Healthcare IT News article, they wrote about a KLAS research study that found that the speech recognition market is ready to grow. Here’s a small portion of the article:

Providers report a demonstrable return on their speech recognition dollars, according to a new report from KLAS. Participants of the study indicated benefits of speech recognition such as staff reductions, improved report turnaround times and increased physician satisfaction.

“The speech recognition market is ripe for healthy growth,” said Ben Brown, author of the report. “Currently, less than one in four hospitals use the technology, however, in light of meaningful use and the benefits providers point out in this study, we expect it will assume a more prominent place in the role of clinical documentation.”

It seems like a bit of journalistic spin to say that speech recognition provides a “demonstrable return.” My personal experience tells me that users either love or hate speech recognition. The article does aptly state that it requires some up front investment to learn voice recognition and access the long term benefits that voice recognition provides.

The other obvious part of the report is that Dragon still dominates the voice recognition landscape. I recently also got an email from Eric Fishman of EMR Consultant, EHR Scope, EHR TV, etc fame (and also an advertiser on this site) about a new voice recognition, dictation and transcription software they’re distributing called Frisbee.

They have a bunch of videos showing Frisbee transcription software in action on EHR TV. I found the one called Frisbee, Dragon Medical and EMR Workflow pretty interesting.

I could see this type of software providing the platform for the future of the transcriptionist. Neil Versel recently posted the news that the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) will be changing their name to the Clinical Documentation Industry Association. No doubt transcription companies are looking at ways to survive. One of those ways will be for the transcriptionist to go beyond just transcribing to assisting with the clinical documentation (including the complicated ICD-10). Seems like Frisbee’s voice recognition into the EMR with the Frisbee routing capabilities for doctors approval and sign off could be an interesting workflow.

I’m not quite as bullish on voice recognition as the report linked above, but there’s no doubt that voice recognition will continue to play a role in healthcare. Especially as it continues to improve its recognition ability and becomes integrated with mobile devices.

I was looking through the HIMSS session titles and saw one about the Usability of PHR, which prompted me sending out the following tweet:

Usability of PHR? First, shouldn’t we address the reason to use PHR?

January 14, 2011 12:53 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@techguy

John Lynn

Then, a smart HIT journalist named Neil Versel sent his comment on my tweet:

Amen! #healthit #PHR RT @techguy: Usability of PHR? First, shouldn’t we address the reason to use PHR?

January 14, 2011 1:55 pm via ÜberSocialOrigReplyRetweetFavorite

@nversel

Neil Versel

Something to think about this weekend.

As you know on the weekend, I try to do my simple posts since most of you are enjoying the weekend like you should.

Today I thought it might be interesting to point to a few different EMR and healthcare IT blog recommendations. This is far from an inclusive list. In fact, I could probably do this every weekend and not repeat the same blog recommendations. Maybe I will! Especially since then as I read various other blogs I can remember to make note of it. So, for this post I’ll start with some popular ones that many people know about.

Fierce EMR – I really like the work that Neil Versel does and Fierce is lucky to have him working on their EMR content.

HIStalk – This is often a bit too hospital focused for my tastes. They do have HIStalk Practice which is more ambulatory focused and has gotten better as Inga’s focused on it more.

Chilmark Research – I really enjoy John’s blog. He does a good job analyzing HIE, EHR and mobile healthcare. The only complaint is that he doesn’t publish enough, but that’s ok. When he does publish it’s almost always an interesting read.

The Health Care Blog – My only complaint about The Health Care blog is that often times it has a lot of posts that aren’t related to health care IT. Although, it does have a strong group of health care IT bloggers that do some great IT and EMR related posts.

Like I said, there are dozens and dozens of other ones. These are a few of the ones that have been around for quite a while doing their thing. I’ll cover some more of the other blogs I enjoy next time. Or you could just keep reading this site and my other blogs (EMR and EHR & The Wired EMR Practice) where I try to write about a lot of the major happenings in the EMR and healthcare IT world.

Neil Versel at Fierce EMR recently did a post talking about the meaningful use exceptions that are available for specialists. In it he quotes David Blumenthal, national health IT coordinator, and Dr. Derek Robinson, medical director for HHS Region V. They provide an example of an exception to the meaningful use criteria that a specialist might be able to use:

For example, three of the “core” measures of meaningful use that all providers must be able report on are blood pressure levels, whether patients over 13 use tobacco products and adult weight screening. “You may say that one of these or all three of these may not be part of your scope of practice,” Robinson said, amednews reports. It is possible to report zero as both the denominator and numerator for the quality measure if that specific item is outside a physician’s scope of practice.

This is what I was talking about in my last post about the EHR Stimulus money for dentists. No doubt there are a whole lot of specialties that will want to be granted these types of exceptions. It will be interesting to see what the exact process is for being granted the exception. I also won’t be surprised if we see some EMR vendors (specialty specific EMR vendors in particular) helping their doctors apply for these exceptions.

The only problem with the exception is for those specialists where the denominator is not 0, but it’s a very small number. I seem to remember a pediatric orthopedic surgeon saying that he only wrote prescriptions a few times a week. Learning and implementing an ePrescribing system for a couple scripts a week isn’t going to be very fun.