We have been working on adding additional features of Community Health Network’s Personal Health Record (PHR) and a question occurred to me.
What is the expectation of privacy a patient has about the data they enter into a PHR on a health care provider’s web site?
If we used the information to help with providing patient care, do we need to ask the patient’s permission before viewing the information? Or is there an assumption that we can use the data because they have entered it into a health care organization’s PHR as long as we follow the requirements detail in HIPAA?
Google, Microsoft, Revolution Health and the other non-health care organizations offering PHRs do not need to follow HIPAA guidelines as far as I understand because the law was only written for health care entities.
I think I’m leaning to that we should ask for permission but it is not required for us to view it. Or we should detail in the PHR terms of use that we can use the information to help provide patient care and that we will not sell the information.
This is something I was really excited about, being a big fan of gMail and Google Apps for Your Domain in particular, and not a big fan of Outlook/Exchange. Basically one and a half Australian students just started using gMail. This is particularly interesting, as these students will enter the workforce familiar with a whole new set of tools.
More on topic with health care, the article below from Ars Technica talks about safeguarding patient medical records, and extending it to cover things like Google Health and Microsoft’s HealthVault.
In the realm of branding and social networking, I found an interesting article on FriendFeed. Now, if I can only figure out what email address I used when I signed up, I’ll be happy.
Google has apparently made embedding RSS super easy, and since I am working on a bunch of feed related projects, I will be all over this. At first glance it is cool, but I’d like to be able to jut add feeds directly. I’ll need to spend more time with it.
When creating a mobile website, several adjustments or considerations need to be made. Obviously, you don’t just port your current website, optimized for a monitor, over to a mobile site.
You need to build the site as if you were building a site for dial-up users. The download/upload speeds on smart phones are not yet comparable to the speed of a broadband connection. Image sizes need to be minimized and html simplified.
The page layout needs to be more vertical than the page design for display on a monitor. The user on a smart phone will be scrolling up and down to look at the page and the screen resolution is not very wide. Also, the page length should be kept as short as possible to avoid long, endlessly scrolling pages.
Applications need to keep this rule in mind also. The forms should only contain a few fields of data entry because it is more difficult to enter data on a phone than a keyboard and the load times will be slower.
The most important consideration, I feel is to make sure that what you put on a mobile makes sense for the user to use. An obvious example is that you wouldn’t put an application on a mobile site that requires the user to print a page. Less obvious is applications that can be built with all the other requirements in mind, but don’t consider whether the user will use them or not, don’t consider the process. We can build a mobile site that has the full features of our Find a Doctor application, including the ability to compare physicians and request appointments, but we realized that a patient would not be doing that on their phone. A patient would be looking up a doctor’s phone number, location, office hours, etc.
Community Health Network’s Car Safety Seat Program has been a part of Safe Kids Worldwide’s efforts to check child safety seats for proper installation through the Safe Kids Buckle Up program. Recently, the Safe Kids Buckle Up program celebrated the inspection of its one millionth car seat.
“Today’s milestone of a million child safety seats checked for proper installation is a prime example of the power of Safe Kids. Coalition coordinators, lead agencies, sponsors and literally thousands of volunteers coming together in pursuit of a common goal—to reduce the number of kids who are buckled up the wrong way or even worse, not at all,” says Mitch Stoller, president and CEO, Safe Kids Worldwide. “This celebration belongs to those of you in the field and the million children who have traveled more safely because of your efforts. Countless parents have slept more soundly knowing that they have learned the right way to secure their children in their car seats, booster seats and seat belts.”
“It has taken 11 years of hard work and unwavering dedication to get us to a million seats checked. To those of you who have spent your weekends crunched into the backseats of hundreds of vehicles, to those of you who have driven new car seats to the site of a crash so that a child would not be exposed to more risk by riding in a potentially damaged seat, to those of you who have made emergency installations at all hours of the day and night. This is your accomplishment and your legacy to the children of your community,” Stoller says.
Mark Dixon, president and CEO of Community Hospitals of Indianapolis, recently became a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), the nation’s leading professional society for health care leaders. Dixon is privileged to use the FACHE credential, which signifies board certification in health care management and ACHE Fellow status.
“Because health care management ultimately affects the people in our communities, it is critically important to have a standard of excellence promoted by a professional organization,” says Thomas C. Dolan, Ph.D., president and CEO of ACHE. “By becoming an ACHE Fellow and simultaneously earning board certification from ACHE, health care leaders can show that they are committed to providing high-quality service to their patients and community.”
Fellow status represents achievement of the highest standard of professional development. In fact, only 7,500 health care executives hold this distinction.
To obtain Fellow status, candidates must fulfill multiple requirements, including passing a comprehensive examination, meeting academic and experiential criteria, earning continuing education credits and demonstrating professional/community involvement. Fellows are also committed to ongoing professional development and undergo recertification every three years.
“I’m thrilled to be recognized as Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives,” Dixon says. “This is such an amazing honor and I am so pleased to be able to serve our patients and our organization at Community Health Network.”
ACHE is an international professional society of more than 30,000 health care executives who are leaders in a variety of health care settings.
Indiana artist Debbie Reichard has completed the installation of an outdoor sculpture in the circle entry of Community Hospital North. This installation is an extension of the Community Health Network Foundation’s initiative to incorporate art into the healing process for patients and families.
Titled A Torrent of Pleasantries (in plaid), the installation is five feet tall and 15 feet long and is made of garden hose and steel. This installation is the first in a series of planned projects created by art students at the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Later this year, more temporary sculptures will be installed as part of an ongoing relationship with students and faculty. Visitors can enjoy this installation through October 2009.
According to Reichard, this installation is her satirical view of suburban life. “Sentimentally, we can be intrinsically connected to specific objects, colors, sounds and smells,” she says. “Even though many of these triggers seem unremarkable to most, everyone can think of an object that reconnects them to a memory.”
Reichard is a former visiting assistant professor of sculpture at the Herron School and has also taught at the University of Washington and the University of Colorado. She is known for creating unique sculptures and ceramics. “I want to change normal,” she says. She works in metal, wood and ceramic, found objects, castable polymers, and sound.
I just uploaded some new video from the Community Hospital South Groundbreaking, last night we pushed out the actual ceremony footage, and today introduced a new video album featuring employee videos about the new facility.
Shuttle service launched at Community Hospital South this week. With the start of major construction just around the corner, some of the parking areas have been reconfigured. Parking in front of the hospital will be more limited while the new patient tower is under construction. To compensate for the spaces that will be blocked due to the expansion, additional parking is now available at the north end of the campus. Click here for a map.
Patients and visitors are encouraged to use the free valet service at the entrance to the emergency room or at the entrance to the medical office building at the north end of the facility. For those who wish to park their own vehicle, Community Hospital South is now offering shuttle service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The shuttle stops at both entrances to offer convenient access to the hospital. To request a ride on the shuttle, call 317-887-RIDE (7433).
We just made an update to the Find a Doctor application on eCommunity.com, basically an update to correct some application flow issues. One of the major issues was our attempt to stop users from using the back button because it was causing issues with the session and search results of the application. It was causing several unintended effects like not being able to come back to a profile page or leave a profile page each occurred in a different set of circumstances.
Shouldn’t have done this in the first place.
Attempting to stop back button use is a major usability must-not-do. There are many articles and books and web pages discussing this usability problem. Probably the most famous is Jakob Nielsen’s “The Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 1999” which still applies today.
I recently read his book “Prioritizing Web Usability” (written with Hoa Loranger) which was published in 2006 and many of the usability problems that he wrote about in 1999 are still relevant today and relevant for the future. It shows how timeless design issues can be and that developers who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat design mistakes of earlier developers.
This site was launched at the end of the day yesterday, and the groundbreaking ceremony is happening today. I am particularly proud of this site, and we have recieved some great feedback so far. The site will be updated tomorrow with videos of today’s groundbreaking event, and will be featuring a blog in the future to update patients, visitors, and employees with news about the project.
What makes me most excited is that South is using a new template and framework that we will be rolling out to the rest of eCommunity in the future.
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but we launched two new sites, which is a great feeling!
