Category Archives: health

The Onus is on Scientists – Shame on the AAAS

Posted on November 2, 2012 by ben

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has just come out against California’s Proposition 37, which would mandate the labeling of genetically-modified foods. In my opinion, the AAAS has failed its duty as promoters of Good Science. The … Continue reading →

Posted in health, medical, policy | 4 Comments

Jumpstarting Health IT innovation

Posted on March 3, 2011 by ben

Until last month, I was lead architect on the SMART Project at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston (now I’m an advisor). One key issue that all Health IT folks grapple with is how to make the Health IT … Continue reading →

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The Health IT report is very good; some opinionated suggestions

Posted on December 8, 2010 by ben

“Oy,” I thought, when I received a copy of “REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT REALIZING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE HEALTHCARE FOR AMERICANS: THE PATH FORWARD” [PDF]. I worried this would be a lot of vague, easy-to-agree-with … Continue reading →

Posted in data, health, privacy | 2 Comments

Taxing Human Transactions – Part 1

Posted on February 18, 2010 by ben

The worst part of my job is dealing with the mess of document formats and coding systems in healthcare. The acronym soup is insane: HL7, CCD, CCR, CDA, Green CDA (which I just heard about from John Halamka’s blog but… … Continue reading →

Posted in data, health, policy | 2 Comments

The first good mainstream article on vaccines in a while

Posted on November 9, 2009 by ben

I meant to mention this a while ago, but I keep forgetting. Amy Wallace at Wired wrote a fantastic piece on how irrational fears of vaccination are putting us all at risk. The feedback to Ms. Wallace has been enormous, … Continue reading →

Posted in health, policy | Leave a comment

ITdotHealth – a new forum for Health IT discussion and a workshop next week

Posted on September 23, 2009 by ben

Next week, I’ll be in Boston for 2 days for a workshop we’re putting together at Harvard Medical School on Health IT Platforms. We’ll be using this workshop to launch a new hub for discussion and debate around the design … Continue reading →

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What about the less obvious errors?

Posted on August 27, 2009 by ben

The New Scientist points out a case of genotyping error by one of the consumer genomics companies, where a software bug caused a genotype to appear non-human. The article attempts to be reassuring: Before other deCODEme customers get too irate … Continue reading →

Posted in genomic, health, medical | Leave a comment

Open Licensing in Health IT

Posted on June 23, 2009 by ben

John Halamka, renowned CIO of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), is a blogger, and he just added a Creative Commons license after making the following remarks: I want my blog to be used for education, training, and research. … Continue reading →

Posted in data, health, policy | 6 Comments

Loosely Coupled Health IT

Posted on June 18, 2009 by ben

My research group, Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, just released a statement of principles in designing the next generation of Health IT, and folks are picking it up. The key concept is substitutability, or what software/Internet architects have called loose coupling. … Continue reading →

Posted in health, web | 2 Comments

Empowering the Patient vs. Enabling an Artificial Monopoly

Posted on June 7, 2009 by ben

Health Information Technology is moving along fairly quickly, with the stimulus money and the rise of Personally Controlled Health Records (Indivo/Dossia, Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault). I’m quite optimistic about the future of health data: there is a growing effort to … Continue reading →

Posted in health, medical, policy, security | 2 Comments