Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »June 23, 2008 — CIO —
It would be nice if medical professionals never lost patient information. But unfortunately, doctors and other healthcare specialists are only human. And the running cliché that doctors' handwriting is hard to read is often repeated for a reason. During his presentation at the Red Hat Summit in Boston, Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discussed four key reasons why medical records should be stored online. Storage, compliance, patient access and community are among the (supremely productive) Halamka's supporting reasons for his claim that online medical records will ensure a national standard of healthcare.
Privacy issues are likely to arise, he admitted, but they can be worked out, and the benefit of better organization of our medical records would be phenomenal. "Open and transparent is good," Halamka explained to this open-source-centric audience. "Proprietary is bad."
Online medical records will help with storage issues concerning patient files. Today, most medical practices write patient information on paper and store each patient's files alphabetically. Records are faxed to new medical offices when patients move, and aren't even passed along that quickly if a patient enters a hospital emergency room. Equally of importance, pointed out Halamka, if a medical office doesn't survive a natural or accidental disaster, what happens to the records?
Furthermore, he said, medical records aren't stored forever. Although it's obviously important to keep a personal copy of medical records, if professionals could look up a patient's information online it would speed up the medical process. While having an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip installed in one's arm for instant identification might seem too Gattaca-like for some users, storing medical records online for instant access is more necessary than ever.
According to Halamka, an estimated 65 percent of U.S. citizens believe that doctors keep electronic records, while only about 15 percent of doctors really do . Why? For one thing, it's expensive; doctors have to subscribe to services that update medical transactions. One answer, Halamka suggested, is for hospitals to give the needed software to individual medical practices so these updates can take place. He suggested that the Internet could—for free—use SOAP and https standards to get the job done more efficiently and affordably.
Nor is the storage issue apt to let up anytime soon. The state of Massachusetts requires that hospitals save all patient data for 30 years. "We've just crossed the half petabyte line" at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Halamka explained. In addition to the hardware requirements, he said, the knowledge-base challenges mean "whole new areas" for service oriented architecture and software as a service.