Ensuring your servers are “HIPAA compliant” sounds like an overwhelming, expensive, and hoop-jumping process to go through. That’s probably why HIPAA compliant hosting services charge around $1,000/month and up (mostly up) for health care organizations to host any ePHI on. And it’s why many, many organizations buy it. But what if we told you there was another way. […]
ELI5: Network Topologies
In this Explain it Like I’m 5 (ELI5) series, we’ll discuss network topologies. A topic you’ll need to understand for the clinical informatics board exam. For other posts like this one, be sure to check out other ELI5 posts like the ones listed at the bottom of this article. Network topologies are how elements within […]
ELI5: Health Level 7 (HL7) Standards
HL7 International is an ANSI accredited standards development organization focused on electronic health information. However, you’ll often hear people referring to HL7 not as the organization itself, but as the standards it produces. Here, we’ll refer to HL7 as the outputs and standards produced by the Health Level Seven International organization, rather than the organization […]
ELI5 Series: Clinical Decision Support Systems
So you’re telling me now that we have an EHR we need a CDS too? Wtf is a CDS? What is Clinical Decision Support (CDS)? CDS Roadmap Definition of CDS: Clinical decision support (CDS) is an expert system that provides “clinicians, patients, or individuals with knowledge and person-specific or population information, intelligently filtered or present at appropriate […]
ELI5: Meaningful Use
If you work in healthcare, you’ve probably heard this phrase thrown around a bit before. You know meaningful use is something that your organization must comply with to receive $$, but what is it really? Simply put, providers and hospitals must show that they are using their Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in a “meaningful” way […]
ELI5 Series: HIPAA
Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act HIPAA. A necessary evil in the world of healthcare in the digital age. Necessary because it protects the privacy and safety of millions of individual’s Personal Health Information (PHI). Evil because your organization will spend a lot of time and money on making sure you comply to the […]
ELI5 Series: What is Clinical Effectiveness?
Cocaine tooth drops…clinically effective? Probably not. In 1962, the FDA amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to include the Kefauver Harris Amendment. This required that all pharmaceutical companies prove that their drugs were effective and safe for use before they could be approved. The disclosure of possible side effects and drug efficacy were also […]