A conversation with John Halamka about health information exchange

Dr. John Halamka joins me for this week’s podcast. He’s a renaissance guy: a physician, a CIO, and a healthcare IT innovator whose work I mentioned in a pair of InfoWorld columns. Lots of people are talking about secure exchange of medical records and portable continuity of care documents. John Halamka is on the front lines actually making these visions real. Among other activities he chairs the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), which began exchanging financial and insurance data almost a decade ago and is now handling clinical data as well in the form of e-prescriptions. The technical, legal, and operational issues are daunting, but you’ll enjoy his pragmatic style and infectious enthusiasm.

We also discuss the national initiative to create a standard for continuity of care documents that will provide two key benefits. First, continuity both within and across regions. Second, data on medical outcomes that can be used by patients to choose providers, and by providers to study the effectiveness of procedures and medicines.

Websites mentioned in this podcast include:

Oh, and there’s a new feed address for this series: feeds.feedburner.com/JonUdellFridayPodcasts.

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12 thoughts on “A conversation with John Halamka about health information exchange

  1. “mp3 URL … not working? (and not linked in the post either?)”

    Whoops, new system kinks. It’s correct in the new feed, but yeah, I forgot to link from the post also. Fixed now. Thanks, Hugh.

  2. Jon,

    I’m using Juice as a catcher, and noticed that the new feed was stalling. Looks like one more tweak is in order.

    path\My Received Podcasts>wget http://blog.jonudell.net/podcast/ju_halamka.mp3
    –21:16:14– http://blog.jonudell.net/podcast/ju_halamka.mp3
    => `ju_halamka.mp3′
    Resolving blog.jonudell.net… 72.232.101.42
    Connecting to blog.jonudell.net[72.232.101.42]:80… connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
    21:16:15 ERROR 404: Not Found.

    path\My Received Podcasts>wget http://jonudell.net/podcast/ju_halamka.mp3
    –21:16:32– http://jonudell.net/podcast/ju_halamka.mp3
    => `ju_halamka.mp3′
    Resolving jonudell.net… 207.22.26.166
    Connecting to jonudell.net[207.22.26.166]:80… connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
    Length: 14,044,616 [audio/mpeg]

    100%[====================================>] 14,044,616 186.33K/s ETA 00:00

    21:17:47 (184.95 KB/s) – `ju_halamka.mp3′ saved [14044616/14044616]

    May your next 5 years be twice as productive as the last 5.
    Success!

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