In the United States as recently as 2009, health records are kept either as paper documents or in database silos proprietary to monolithic health information systems such as Epic and Cerner. More importantly, the semantics of the information is also proprietary which means the exchange of even high level information between systems is impossible, much less for patients, who are left with gaps and inconsistencies in their personal healthcare information.
On February 17, 2009, the American Reinvestment Recovery Act (ARRA) was enacted to modernize the US health system through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) which included initiatives to digitize health records (EHR) and incentivize health care providers to use standards based clinical terminologies so medical knowledge is semantically interoperable.
In general these measures known as Meaningful Use (MU) are overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with 5 goals:
We are currently in the third iteration of Meaningful Use, MU3. MU3 is centered around value based care as opposed to volume based care and penalizes health systems that do not demonstrate better value. In addition, the MU3 prime directive is to ensure the patient has access to their personal health information, can understand what it means, and can manage how it is used.
In order to meet these goals, health systems are grappling with solutions to make healthcare information available and semantically interoperable. A permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) provides a solution to existing silos of information. It is the mission of this subgroup to demonstrate how health information can be made interoperable and exchanged with equal meaning amongst all participants.
The problem of portability for healthcare information is not just a problem in the US,and all solutions provided by this sub-group are meant to be universal and will source existing technologies from international healthcare institutions.
To review the full text of the Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup Charter, please view here.
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The HC-SIG Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup has the following goals:
Work products of the Interoperable Healthcare subgroup include, but are not limited to:
HIS-SIG Meetings are scheduled twice monthly for one hour. Meetings will discuss progress on tasks assigned in the previous meeting and any impediments or findings. General discussion to focus on topics posted in the agenda will follow. Agenda items can be proposed by individual members in advance of the meeting. Time will be given for new member introductions and open floor topics. Finally, discussion of work proposed for upcoming meetings, task creation and task assignment. All Hyperledger meetings are run covered by the following Antitrust Policy.
A reminder to all HC-SIG members that this meeting is being recorded
Welcome statement - brief introduction to HIS
If you’re new to the group, please…
Introduce yourself, your background and interest in the group
Your anticipated level of participation/commitment
(active, infrequent, capable of taking on a role and/or task)
Tell us where you're geographically located
What days, times you prefer or can work with
Respond to queries and comments from the group
General review of HIS mission statement and goals
Feel free to make an announcement here, on our Rocket.Chat channel, or via our email listserv
Open floor
Scheduled for Friday, 2019.10.04, 0700 Pacific Time
Add links to the sub-pages with meeting notes for the past meetings
Insert links to any work that is currently ongoing.
Insert links to any work that has been completed by this working group
Insert links to any external resources