HealthShare Connections News Flash No.5

“… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

Dickens wrote that 160 years ago, but it’s not a bad description of the current state of the world’s healthcare throughout 2020, with stunning scientific developments arising monthly even as we struggle to have populations and governments accept and implement public health measures. In the time of Covid, each month brings us to a different phase, with new challenges and new ways to address those challenges – and information collection and delivery is always part of the answer. In the past year, priority has moved through detection, disease modeling, risk assessment, equipment supply chain, and treatment strategies, then onto contract tracing, syndromic surveillance, and modeling the health risks of reopening. Now, it’s about vaccine allocation and scheduling, tracking, reporting, and monitoring. We are deeply involved in these activities, together with many of you; the impressive customer stories in this issue provide a sampling. The things you are doing now will help us emerge from this crisis and will give the world better solutions for future crises.

Of course, HealthShare has moved forward in several other important directions as well. We have been fortunate to be able to keep our product and implementation operations going strong, although we miss the face-to-face contact with each other and with all of you. The 2020.2 release of InterSystems HealthShare® is out, including the CMS Solution Pack – a full set of data elements, tools, and functionality to fulfill the first round of the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access rule in the USA, with more coming to support future phases. This release also marks the rollout (starting in the United Kingdom) of Care Community for care coordination and planning, as well as HL7® FHIR® data expansion and flexible profile tools, enhancements to the Clinical Viewer and Provider Directory, greater third-party health app control, and a range of usability enhancements. See the story below for more details.

In 2021, we will continue to focus HealthShare developments on two broad themes: building a yet faster/stronger/more nimble, broad-based health data platform, and creating health solutions that address important hot-button issues in the payer, provider, life science and regional health sectors. More to come on these in future issues of HealthShare Connections.

…it was the spring of hope…

As we kickoff the new year, we take a moment to remember the hardship and the loss that many of you have experienced in your families and in your work life. To take a little more inspiration from Dickens, we look forward to a spring of hope for the health, life, and economy of the world – a hope advanced by the achievements of the customers in these pages and by the rest of your good works. Stay safe, and Happy New Year.

Jonathan Teich, MD, PhD
jonathan.teich@intersystems.com

 

• New Release of HealthShare
• South Australia’s Health Information Exchange Supports Rapid Preparation for the Second Wave
• Healthshare® CMS Solution Pack™ Helps Meet New U.S. Government Requirements Putting Patients in Charge of Their Data
• InterSystems Named a Visionary by Gartner
• For a Patient-centric Pandemic Response, Follow the Data