The digital health space refers to the integration of technology and health care services to improve the overall quality of health care delivery. It encompasses a wide range of innovative and emerging technologies such as wearables, telehealth, artificial intelligence, mobile health, and electronic health records (EHRs). The digital health space offers numerous benefits such as improved patient outcomes, increased access to health care, reduced costs, and improved communication and collaboration between patients and health care providers. For example, patients can now monitor their vital signs such as blood pressure and glucose levels from home using wearable devices and share the data with their doctors in real-time. Telehealth technology allows patients to consult with their health care providers remotely without having to travel to the hospital, making health care more accessible, particularly in remote or rural areas. Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze vast amounts of patient data to identify patterns, predict outcomes, and provide personalized treatment recommendations. Overall, the digital health space is rapidly evolving, and the integration of technology in health

Friday, July 1, 2022

Biden signs law requiring more VA transparency on EHR rollout costs | Healthcare Dive

The VAH system is no stranger to difficulties with electronic health records. The VA itself is a very large health system as a standalone division of health care for government programs.  The latest iteration being developed by Cerner,  is to make the Depatment of Defense electronic health record interoperable with the Cerner VA EHR.

Each system has a mutiplicity of clinics, hospitals and outpatient facilities to be supported.  During the past decade most EHR vendors have struggled to adopt interoperability across vastly different EHR systems.  Some success has been attained by large vendors such as Epic within their own ecosystem. Epic has been very successful with it's portal, "My Chart"  which allows any hospital or clinic to share it's EHR with any other facility using Epic's EHR.  
I can attest to the validity of it's portal, having used it for the UCLA, Scripps hospital, Cleveland Clinic, and Mayo Clinic as well as my own physicians locally.

Cerner EHR is now a subsidiary of Oracle. Oracle offers it's own interoperable system amongst  Keck Medicine of  USC,  Boston Children's Hospital,    Southwest General Health Center.   St John's Hospice, and connects with  CommonWell Health Alliance.  Cerner was instrumental in forming the Commonwell Health Alliance.

The VA is a political football. Each change of administration has a bullet point presentation claiming about cost over runs for the "new" VA EHR.  The VA seems to use the Elon Musk model of developing rockets. Launch it and see if it blows up.  Analyze when and why, fix it and move on.  It is the VA adaptation of recycling the EHR. During the last two decades many iterations of the VA EHR have undegone RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.)


 The history of the VA Information Technology program dates back into the 1970s.

The details of the development program for VA IT are outlined here

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