Entries from July 2009
2 weeks ago I solicited help to put together a Health IT Ontology (see Components of HIT…a start). This post is the result of 6 rounds of edits. The new name, I think, better represents the goal of defining all the entities and relationships within the domain of health IT. Click on the image below to see it full size.
Following are the top-level categories:
- Health Information Technology
- Clinical Information System
- Hospital/Clinic Management
- Consumer-Oriented Technologies
- Public Health & Biosurveillance
- Reference
- Research
- Regional & System-Level HIS
The initial motivation behind this was to determine where ART-focused EMRs sat in the scope of HIT, but what I expected to be a trivial exercise quickly became a difficult task. Health IT is an extremely complex and expansive domain and every item in this heirarchy could be broken down into even smaller pieces (similar to EMR/EHR). My goal for this diagram was to cover the breadth of health IT more than the depth. It is certainly possible that there are some oversights, in which case I would love to hear from you.
I welcome your thoughts, criticisms, and suggestions on the HIT Onthology. Using social media (esp. Twitter and Aardvark) was so successful this time around that I plan to pursue more online collaborative projects in the future.
Many thanks to everyone who contributed, and a special shout out to Jacob Sattelmair, Janette Heung, blog commenters, Richard Thall and Eddie from Aardvark, and the score of Twitterers who provided very valuable feedback!
Categories: health information technology
Tagged: ehr, emr, health information technology, health IT, health records, HIT, HIT Ontology, ontology
Health information technology (HIT) is a broad and extremely complex field, and I want to visualize it. I’m going to need your help to do it. But first it needs defining…
HIT could simply be defined as any information technology utilized within the healthcare industry vertical, but that would be too inclusive, because that means a MySQL database is considered HIT because it is sometimes used in a hospital. Brailer & Thompson, former ONC Secretary and former HHS Secretary respectively, define it as “the application of information processing involving both computer hardware and software that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision making” (Thompson & Braile, 2004). The line between HIT and health informatics is fuzzy and we’ll ignore it for now.
With this definition, I tried to create a hierarchical list of the types of health IT software. I want the list to be comprehensive in breadth and don’t care quite as much about depth (3 or 4 levels should be sufficient). There are dozens of ways to structure this list and probably hundreds of items I missed. This is a work in progress, so please leave a comment and let me know what you would change/add/remove. I’ll keep updating it until everyone feels good about it. After that comes the visualization…
HIT Categorization Hierarchy – Take 5
- Clinical
- EMR/EHR
- Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) Focused (common in areas with high HIV/AIDS & TB prevalence)
- eRx (CPOE)
- Clinical Decision Support
- Digital Imaging & Archiving Systems (e.g. PACS)
- Medical Devices & Equipment
- Clinical Document Management
- “Personalized Medicine”
- Hospital/Clinic Management
- Physician Office Management Information System (POMIS)
- Hospital Management Information System (HMIS)
- Accounting
- Patient Billing
- Claims Processing
- Human Resource Management
- OR Scheduling
- Appointment Scheduling
- Lab/Pharmacy Management
- Public Health & Biosurveillance
- Public Health Reporting
- Diesease Surveillance Networks (e.g. CDC Biomonitoring and Environmental Public Health Tracking Network)
- Vital Registry (Birth, Death, & Marraige Records)
- Consumer-Oriented Technologies
- Personal Health Devices (e.g. WAN-enabled weight scale, phone-enabled glucose monitor, etc.)
- Personal Health Applications (i.e. exercise & weight tracking)
- Patient Portals
- Personal Health Records (PHR)
- Health-centered Social Networks (Patients Like Me, 23andme, etc.)
- Medical References
- Drug references (for docs and patients)
- Medical references (like WebMD, also for docs and patients)
- Research
- Genomics
- Medical data warehousing
- Clinical Trial Recruitment, Management, etc.
- Regional & Systems Level Health Information Systems
- Vitals Registration
- Health Information Exchange (HIE)
- National Health Information Network (NHIN)
A special thanks to the Twitterers that have already helped me on this: @chadosgood, @oneofthefreds, @ChristineKraft, @ePatientDave, @MedC2, and my good friend Jake. And a shout out to Sam Adam’s HIT Primer on his blog, IT (R)EVOLUTION, that helped get me started.
A few other helpful sources:
Categories: health information technology
Tagged: CPOE, emr, health IT, HIT
I wanted to take this post to thank Cafe Luna and the many places like it that not only make my mobile work lifestyle possible, but also make it taste a lot better. Cafe Luna, just outside of Central Square in Cambridge, MA, is quickly becoming one of my favorites with free WI-FI, a great shot of espresso, a suprisingly good lobster roll (right?), and even live music several times a week.
A few of my other favorites in Boston/Cambridge:
* Trident Bookseller – all types of teas, decent coffee with free refills, and a full menu with all-day breakfast (try the breakfast burrito); free WI-FI, like everything on Newbury
* Natural Bean Organic Coffee – also on Newbury; hands down the best cup of drip coffee I have had in Boston; just a few tables inside and out
* Flour – in the South End; no internet, but does it really matter when they make sticky buns as good as these? I think not. Plus, only 2 blocks from Orinoco, one of my favorite lunch or dinner restaurants around.
* Pete’s Coffee in Harvard Sq – the sticky buns aren’t quite as good as they are at Flour, but I haven’t found a better, more consistent cappuccino in the city; the park outside is also nice
Other suggestions? Leave it in the comments…
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: boston, cafe luna, cambridge, coffee, free wifi, mobile lifestyle, natural bean organic coffee, trident bookseller
