Here are my favorite links from the Health IT and general IT sector today. Follow me on Twitter to get most of these links real-time, albeit with less commentary.
OCHIN awarded federal grant to help community health centers with HIT
OCHIN has scored a 3-year $775,000 annual grant to provide services to client clinics dealing with PCMH, MU, EHR implementations and so forth. Good for them. But I wonder whether the client clinics might be better off struggling with some or all of these issues directly. After all, they’ll have to change their cultures to really develop a viable PCMH program, and you can’t buy culture. Furthermore, if you think Health IT changes are going to stop after PCMH and MU, you’re dreaming. Plan to hire IT capacity in-house if you can, because you have got to have internal change and technical capacity.
Vampire data and 3 other cyber security threats for 2013
I’m always a little suspicious of a security services vendor trumpeting all the threats that will destroy your business if you don’t hire someone like them. But in truth the threats are real — it’s just a question of how much risk you’re really facing in your situation. Still, the threats and issues to consider here include:
- Watch out for risks posed by data you aren’t aware of or can’t easily monitor or control (what they’re calling “vampire data”), including cloud-hosted stuff or old data stores you’ve forgotten about
- If you don’t already have lawyers and others on retainer to help you in a breach situation, you really should because you don’t want to be scrambling to hire them after a breach
- You really need to be logging stuff and reviewing the logs, folks (easier said than done)
- Hackers are as much about disrupting your business as stealing your data these days
- Just start publishing your breaches, even if it doesn’t involve ePHI
Analysis: Microsoft Is Squandering Its Hyper-V Opportunity
Critics love the Hyper-V included with Windows Server 2012. But it’s not taking off because of several strategic mistakes Microsoft has made and continues making. Meanwhile, VMware remains king of virtualization for most businesses.
How to Say ‘Yes’ to BYOD
Saying “no way in hell” to smartphones, tablets and other employee-owned gear in the enterprise strikes me as a bigger risk than saying “yes, but with controls” and this audio panel discusses how you can say yes and feel good about it. About 15 minutes long.
How MiGym plans to quantify the health club workout
Finally. Pretty soon you’ll be able to take your smartphone to the gym and capture workout data from the machines already there, then sling that data into an online PHR (like Microsoft’s almost-forgotten HealthVault). My own thinking is that there’s a future for CHCs in the health club space. I mean what are we doing, disease management or health promotion? Keep an eye on gyms, health data devices (the “quantified self” movement), PHRs, and developments in payer preferences for preventive care with results.
Gravity Medium 