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Query Health Mentioned by Dr. Farzad Mostashari in Recent Post

If you haven't already, be sure to stop by the Health IT Buzz Blog to view Dr. Farzad Mostashari's, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, latest blog post where he discusses the new Query Health Initiative, among others:

http://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/from-the-onc-desk/announcing-metadata-pilots-realize-pcast-vision/#ixzz1VJk5Ykjx

Keep tabs on our Wiki page for updates related to Query Health work!

Provider Directories Progress Update: Harmonization Approach

Recently, the Provider Directories Query for Electronic Service Information Use Case Development Team passed the baton to the Harmonization Team to conduct a thorough analysis of the data elements defined in the use case. Going forward, the Harmonization Team will evaluate each standard as a group and commit to a standard or set of standards. Currently, the standards being considered for the mapping against the data elements set forth in the Electronic Service Information Discovery Use Case include:

• Microdata
• LDAP X.500
•  IHE HPD
• ASC X12 274N

To evaluate each standard option, the Harmonization Team will start by creating and reviewing a data model using the data elements provided in Section 12 of the Query for Electronic Service Information Use Case. The team will then review the dataset evaluation of those data elements and align them to the standards under consideration. The team’s next step will be to analyze standards and data element mappings to develop an initial analysis for each standard that will form the basis of consensus statements for the workgroup. From there, the mapping analysis consensus statements will be finalized and posted to the Wiki for review and consensus voting by each workgroup member. Although the next step is out of scope for the current harmonization approach, the work that is done by the Harmonization Team will lend itself to the eventual development of implementation and transport guidance.

 

For more information regarding the Provider Directories Harmonization Approach, please visit our Wiki page.

Arien Malec Resigning as Coordinator, Returning as a Volunteer

Earlier this week, Arien Malec announced his resignation as Coordinator of the Direct Project and the Standards & Interoperability (S&I) Framework to return to the private sector. Upon speaking to the Transitions of Care Initiative during the All Hands Meeting on August 9, Arien expressed his gratitude and enthusiasm for the work of the S&I Framework.  Each workgroup lead took a few minutes to express their appreciation for his leadership of the Transitions of Care Initiative, and wish him the best of luck.

Arien’s role as Coordinator of the S&I Framework will be transitioned to Jitin Asnaani, who will also serve as interim Coordinator for the Direct Project.  Arien will continue to stay involved as a volunteer in the Direct Project and the S&I Framework, primarily in the Transitions of Care Initiative. To read more about Arien’s transition, please read the posting by Dr. Doug Fridsma (Director of the Standards and Interoperability Office) on Health IT Buzz.

Transitions of Care Initiative Releases Clinical Information Model (CIM) for Consensus Feedback

Last week, the Transitions of Care (TOC) Initiative released the Clinical Information Model (CIM) for consensus feedback. The TOC CIM is intended to serve as a logical overlay and neutral representation of the data needed to support care transitions. The value proposition inherent in the CIM is that it provides a view for clinicians into the type of data needed to support each care transition, and gives implementers and vendors an idea of how to store and exchange that data. The TOC CIM is intended to be a logical view of the common data model that underlies all care transition information. In practice, it will manifest itself as physical data within an organization engaged in transitions of care.

While the TOC CIM will continue to be refined, the general consensus of the Clinical Information Model & Vocabulary WG is that the TOC CIM specification (Version 1.5) is correct in its representation of the requirements for each care transition, and aligns to the requirements outlined in the S&I Framework Transitions of Care Use Case. An initial formal consensus vote opened on Thursday, July 28, 2011 to finalize this decision. Comments and questions on this consensus are being discussed until August 11, 2011 during an open comment period surrounding this consensus. While only committed members of the Clinical Information Model & Vocabulary WG can register a vote during the consensus process, all members of the S&I Framework are encouraged to provide feedback on the CIM. To learn more about the consensus process, please visit the TOC CIM Consensus page on the S&I Framework wiki.

Query Health Summer Concert Series Kicked Off Last Week

Join us for the second installment today at 12:30.

The first installment of ONC’s Summer Concert Series featured Rich Platt and Jeff Brown of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Population Medicine who presented their work in distributed population queries.  PopMedNet uses distributed networks to analyze data from multiple organizations in order to aggregate information for secondary use such as disease surveillance, comparative effectiveness, and medical product safety.  In one example, the FDA identified final specifications for a query to monitor the cardiac outcomes of a particular drug.  Using PopMedNet, the specs were distributed to 17 data partners with a combined 99 million individual users.   Within an incredible turnaround time of two days a report was delivered outlining statistics about new users (including distributions by age, sex, year, and health plan), first treatment exposure duration, and cardiac outcome diagnoses during treatment.  Platt and Brown also emphasized the importance of governance among participants in a distributed network in order to perform successful queries. PopMedNet’s flexibility allows for each network of participants to create, administer and govern their own networks.  If you missed their presentation, you can watch the video below or by visiting www.queryhealth.com and clicking on ‘Summer Concert Series.’ 

The second installment of the Summer Concert Series is today at 12:30pm where Andy Gregorowicz will be presenting MITRE’s work on hQuery.  hQuery uses pervasive internet-based technologies to deliver flexible easy-to-understand queries and distributed ultra-large scale query execution capabilities.  Click here to attend today’s session at 12:30 and learn more about hQuery’s approach to distributed population queries!

The Summer Concert Series is a prelude to a new initiative, Query Health, that will be launched on September 6th to establish standards for distributed population queries for EHRs and community records. ONC is gathering commitments from leaders in areas such as clinical research, public health, health care policy, and other related fields to provide insight and expertise to Query Health.  To join the Query Health Initiative click here. 

 

 

Distributed Population Queries - Sending Questions to the Data

We want to call your attention to Wes Rishel's blog post last night on "Sending Questions to the Data"

http://blogs.gartner.com/wes_rishel/2011/07/26/onc-moves-on-sending-questions-to-the-data/

Feel free to share your comments and ideas with Wes.

Distributed Population Queries - The Summer Concert Series

 

ONC is pleased to invite interested healthcare community members to the “Summer Concert Series” on Distributed Population Queries

Virtuosos in the field will be presenting their work related to distributed population queries, which can be used for research, quality measures, syndromic surveillance and many other applications.  The results of distributed population queries are aggregate health measures from close to the source, keeping protected health information secure.

This is all prelude to a new initiative, Query Health, that will be launched on September 6^th to establish standards for distributed population queries for electronic health records. Learn more about the initiative from S&I Coordinator Rich Elmore’s blog post on Query Health.

Please save the following dates for what promises to be some tour de force performances!

Date	Day	Time (ET)	Presentation	Calendar Invite
8/3	Wed	1:30-3:00 PM	PopMedNet with Rich Platt and Jeff Brown	Download
8/8	Mon	12:30-2:00 PM	hQuery with Marc Hadley and Andy Gregorowicz	Download
8/9	Tue	11:30-1:00 PM	UPHN with Leroy Jones	Download
8/22	Mon	12:30-2:00 PM	caGrid with Ken Buetow	Download
8/24	Wed	10:30-12:00PM	Population CCR with Steve Waldren	Download
8/25	Thurs	11:30-1:00PM	“The Hub” – Hub Population Health System with Jesse Singer and Michael Buck	Download
8/26	Fri	10:30-12:00 PM	DARTNet with Wilson Pace	Download
8/26	Fri	1:30-3:00 PM	Distribute and BioSense with David Buckeridge and Taha Kass-Hout	Download
8/29	Mon	11:30-1:00 PM	Regenstrief’s Distributed Query with Shaun Grannis	Download
8/29	Mon	2:30-4:00 PM	OMOP with Tom Scarnecchia, Patrick Ryan and Marc Overhage	Download
8/30	Cancelled	Cancelled	PEDSNet	Cancelled
8/30	Tue	1:30-3:00 PM	i2b2/SHRINE with Zak Kohane and Shawn Murphy	Download
9/6	Tue	3:00-4:30 PM	Query Health Launch with Farzad Mostashari, Doug Fridsma, Rich Elmore, and Todd Park	Download

Join the Summer Concert Series webinars at siframework1.webex.com - 10 minutes before the meeting, click on the topmost meeting labeled Query Health.  Dial-in instructions will be provided. 

Participate in the Query Health project: 

http://wiki.siframework.org/Query+Health+Registration

 

Implementation and Workgroup Meetings

Meeting	Day	Time (ET)	Frequency	Calendar Invite
Implementation Group	Tuesdays	3:00-4:30pm	Weekly starting 9/6 (may switch to Bi-Weekly)	Download
Technical WG	Wednesdays	11:00-12:00pm	Weekly starting 9/7	Download
Clinical WG	Wednesdays	12:00-1:00pm	Weekly starting 9/7	Download
Business WG	Thursdays	11:00-12:00pm	Weekly starting 9/8	Download

Distributed Population Queries – A National Priority

By Rich Elmore, Initiative Coordinator – Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

This August, ONC will be sponsoring the “Summer Concert Series” on the state-of-the-art of distributed population queries. The “Summer Concert Series” webinar presentations will provide tremendous insight from a real-world perspective to interested stakeholders on practitioners’ experience with distributed queries.

Distributed population queries can be applied to public health surveillance, research, quality measures, chronic disease stratification and many other purposes. These queries return aggregate information from a standard clinical information model, leaving protected health information safely behind the health care organizations’ firewalls.

The use of distributed population queries for clinical insight has been hindered by organizational limitations on data sharing, inconsistencies in the expression of clinical concepts and lack of standards for distributed queries. This has ultimately limited their use, with a few notable exceptions, to large healthcare organizations with more sophisticated IT infrastructures and deeper research budgets.

One may ask “Why not just centralize the data?” Well for one, for non-regulated purposes many healthcare organizations will choose not to loosen their control over their data. Also, as a matter of principle, patient level data shouldn’t be exchanged when aggregate level information will do. Finally, keeping data close to the source may improve adaptability to dynamic information needs and responsiveness to patient information sharing preferences.

As we approach critical mass of deployments of certified and standardized Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, we may for the first time be able to consider broader use of distributed population queries. EHR certification standards require greater adherence to standardized vocabularies and information exchange structures. While challenges with comparative data will remain, Meaningful Use Stage 2 will likely further improve vocabulary, message and transport standards.

As an example of distributed queries, Wes Rishel recently explored the changing public health reporting needs during an epidemic. He suggested use of distributed population queries to “send questions to the data.”

For another example, until recently the most extensive research to identify comorbidities for autism patients was a multi-year study on 163 patients. Zak Kohane’s new work on autism patients and comorbidities used distributed queries across the i2b2 SHRINE network linking 4 Boston hospitals. By tapping into a much larger patient population, his analysis provided greater insight into the comorbidities. The time required to conduct the research was 3 weeks. Distributed queries delivered these deeper insights by reaching a much larger patient population in significantly less time.

Query Health, a public/private partnership project, will be launched in September to take some practical first steps towards this national priority. The ultimate goal of the Query Health initiative will be to define the standards and services to better enable the use of this distributed approach.

Please mark your calendars for the “Summer Concert Series” in August and the Query Health project launch on September 6^th at 3 PM ET. Visit the Query Health web site for more information on these events.

Provider Directory - Query for Digital Certificate Use Case for Direct Project - Consensus

As a reminder, the Query for Digital Certificate Use Case for Direct Project is now open for voting to reach consensus. If you have not done so yet, please provide your vote on the Consensus Wiki Page. The voting period will end by 11:59PM ET on Sunday, July 17^th, 2011. Any comments received prior to the 7/15 PD Sprint Team meeting will be addressed during that meeting. Only one vote per organization would be counted towards consensus. Our goal is to complete consensus on July 18^th, 2011.

 Each Committed Member is requested to review the Query for Digital Certificate Use Case for Direct Project and vote “Yes” or “No” towards consensus. Any “No” votes should be accompanied with actionable feedback which will be addressed with the Sprint team or offline. Other Sprint Team members are welcome to provide comments using the discussion threads for the Use Case.

• The Query for Digital Certificate Use Case for Direct Project is available at: http://wiki.siframework.org/Query+for+Digital+Certificate+Use+Case+for+Direct+Project   
• The Consensus Page for this Use Case is available at: http://wiki.siframework.org/PD+-+Query+for+Digital+Certificate+Use+Case+For+Direct+Project+Consensus+Page.