D.C. Report: ONC’s E-Consent Pilot Moves Forward

Understanding the scope of issues involved with the wireless environment is necessary to assessing areas for attention.  For example, management of the spectrum; inventory of wireless devices within the hospital, managing and optimizing wireless infrastructure and leveraging existing standards and determining the need for new standards.  To this last point, what is the role of government vs. the private sector; i.e., FDA entering the EHR space.   What are the obstacles to developing a highly reliable infrastructure?  These include such items as organizational silos keeping information separate, resource constraints, lack of technical competencies, BYOD (bring your own device) and BYOI (bring your own infrastructure) and perception that hospitals are not as agile as other industries and players who don’t want to play.   To achieve a high reliability infrastructure and address some of these obstacles, organizations are advised to:

• Have a plan
• Create a design that incorporates the concept of a system approach
• Educate professionals, who will be managing these wireless networks
• Include risk management and a hazard analysis
• Understand devices and applications and what their networking requirements are and how they’ll be used.

Here is a copy of the workshop agenda and slides: Risks, Challenges and Opportunities of Wireless Technology Systems in Healthcare. CHIME will provide updates on next steps, including a future publication outlining the workshop outcomes.

A new telehealth program is targeted at three states with the highest density of veterans – Virginia, Montana and Alaska – and will set aside $300,000 for each state to upgrade its telehealth network and develop electronic health records that are compatible with the VA's VistA EHR.