Today is my second day in Washington DC. Yesterday was the STFM communications committee meeting. These all-day meetings can be a challenge – as it seems that everyone gets kinda antsy toward the end of the day. We got a fair amount accomplished.
Now I'm at the AMIA Primary Care Informatics Working Group meeting.
Bob Phillips from the Graham Center is talking about the new project of the Center for Health Information Technology. - specifically the AAFP's EHR project. There will be a press release next Wednesday morning on the project – and how the flavor has changed a bit – with less of an emphasis on open source, and more of an emphasis on vendor openness. The "acid test" to define which vendors would be involved is as follows:
ACID test:
A = affordability.
C = Compatible. The systems must be compatible with each other and vendor lock needs to be avoided.
I = Interoperability. The data must be stored in a manner that permits access regardless of system or hardware.
D = Data stewardship. The data must remain owned.
Hmmm. This is tough to interpret, and its not clear to me exaclty what this really means. Tomorrow Alan Zuckerman is holding a session on the project and I think we can build a more detailed understanding of it then. David Kibbe has held these cards rather close to his chest – and in this absence of transparency – it's hard to trust that what he's doing is the right thing. I do trust Alan – and I'm curious how he's been able to engage David in such a detailed fashion. I look forward to learning more from him.
Bob's next topic was a discussion of a statement that will soon be released by NAPCRG at their recent meeting in Banff.
The short version is that NAPCRG wants the US to embrace a coding system that makes sense to primary care physicians, and that they feel that ICPC-2 is the right answer rather than SNOMED-CT.
