HL7 v2 and V3 comparison.

There are tons of articles on the web about HL7 v2 and v3 comparison. This is just one of them.

HL7 has been a dominant force in the Healthcare IT systems and continues to remain so primarily with its messaging standard v2.x. With the introduction of v3, HL7 has taken a major step to overcome the limitations or sometimes dead-ends in v2.x implementation. Below is a quick summary of those differences from an Healthcare IT implementation perspective. There is also a link to a very good presentation on the differences.

Differences between HL7 v2 and v3:
HL7 V2

• Not “Plug and Play” – it provides 80 percent of the interface and a framework to negotiate the remaining 20 percent on an interface-by-interface basis
• Historically built in an ad hoc way because no other standard existed at the time
• Generally provides compatibility between 2.X versions
• Messaging-based standard built upon pipe and hat encoding
• In the U.S., V2 is what most people think of when people say “HL7″

HL7 V3

• Approaching “Plug and Play” – less of a “framework for negotiation”
• Many decades of effort over ten year period reflecting “best and brightest” thinking
• NOT backward compatible with V2
• Model-based standard built upon Reference Information Model (RIM) provides consistency across entire standard
• In the U.S., Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is what most people in the U.S. think of when people say “HL7 V3″
• V3 messaging hasn't taken off much when compared to the V3 documents adoption.
  

Video on HL7 v2 and v3 comparison:

http://www.neotool.com/download/videos/Dec4_Fast15_HL7_V3_Insights.swf

Useful links on HL7:
http://www.hl7standards.com/blog/

Internet Explorer 9 "to close performance gap" | News | PC Pro

Internet Explorer 9 "to close performance gap" | News | PC Pro

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Someone says - If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

I read a blogpost on coders that says

Good programs do not contain spelling errors or have grammatical mistakes. I think this is probably a result of fractal attention to detail; in great programs things are correct at all levels, down to the periods at the ends of sentences in comments.

Sounds interesting?

Read more here - http://www.itworld.com/development/84780/if-comments-are-ugly-code-ugly

How to fund a startup by Paul Graham

A blog post written by Paul Graham talks everything about funding a startup, to the skills sets needed by startups, and lot more. It's a good two hours read though.

Quick snapshots from the post.

I was surprised recently when I realized that all the worst problems we faced in our startup were due not to competitors, but investors. Dealing with competitors was easy by comparison.

Another way to fund a startup is to get a job. The best sort of job is a consulting project in which you can build whatever software you wanted to sell as a startup. Then you can gradually transform yourself from a consulting company into a product company, and have your clients pay your development expenses.

Fear of failure is an extraordinarily powerful force. Usually it prevents people from starting things, but once you publish some definite ambition, it switches directions and starts working in your favor.

Angels are individual rich people. Angels who've made money in technology are preferable, for two reasons: they understand your situation, and they're a source of contacts and advice.


Some angel investors join together in syndicates. Any city where people start startups will have one or more of them. In Boston the biggest is the Common Angels. In the Bay Area it's the Band of Angels. You can find groups near you through the Angel Capital Association.

Y Combinator: Innovative early stage seed funding for startups.

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Y Combinator out of SF bay area provides seed funding for Startups. The unique thing about YC is their approach to funding. YC identifies aspiring startups at the early stage and provides seed funding and ecosystem to prepare the startups for the next stage.

More about YC from YC..

At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you've built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.

We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%).

We're hackers ourselves, and we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want.

help founders deal with investors and acquirers.

We introduce founders to lawyers who will often, because of the YC connection, agree to defer payment for legal work.

We advise about what to patent, and when.

One of the least publicized things we do, for obvious reasons, is mediate disputes between founders. No startup thinks they're going to need that, but most do at some point.

Instead of submitting a business plan or making a slide presentation, you just fill out an application form.

Related articles

• The most important question to ask before taking seed money (cdixon.org)
• Startup School: Sequoia's Greg McAdoo On The Opportunities Of A Recession (techcrunch.com)
• 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground (mashable.com)

When is a web-based EHR (not) a good choice?

Web-based EHRs are gaining popularity due to following reasons:

- they don't require hardware setup at the doctor's office and therefore hardware costs and cost associated with setting it up and maintaining it is not required.

- the data is automatically backed up by the vendor in a centralized server. backups are no more the doctor's responsibility.

- software upgrades are automatically done by the vendor automatically, sometimes with additional cost. but, the doctor doesn't have to burden themselves with the upgrade process and the risk associated with it.

- accessible anywhere, anytime. the EMR is accessible from any corner of the world 24x7 with just a PC and a web browser.

- no worries about risk management. what if a natural disaster strikes or a fire accident happens at the doctor's office? zero impact, as the patient data is maintained in a different location presumably protected from such disasters and all risk-mitigating measures taken.

- the patient data is interoperable in/out with other EHR systems, providing insight into the patient's complete health history

With all those overwhelming benefits behind, there are few flip-side things inherent with web-based EHRs:

- access to patient data when the internet is down or the vendor server is down, especially during times of emergency(maybe during a surgery).

- bandwidth requirements of the software. ideally, the software shouldn't require heavy internet bandwidth. but, reality may differ.

- how secure is the patient data outside your walls when sent or received from the server.

- what are the measures taken by the company to protect against identity thefts?

The decision to or not to choose a web-based EHR is purely need-based. But, a lot of thought process needs to go in before making the final call.

New EHR certification body.

With Healthcare IT at the center of the Healthcare Stimulus, the 'meaningful use' and 'EHR certification' terms have taken center stage. CCHIT has remained as the only approved body to certify EHR systems. Now, a new company Drummond Group has come forward to create another EHR certification body. Refer to the link below for more details.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/drummond-group-may-provide-competition-cchit

This is a welcome change, as providers and EHR vendors have been scrambling to CCHIT sometimes with satisfying feedback from CCHIT and sometimes otherwise.

HL7 announces EHR Specification

HL7 announced yesterday that is has published the healthcare industry’s first ANSI (American National Standards Institute)-approved standard that specifies the functional requirements for regulated clinical research in an electronic health record system (EHR-S). The HL7 EHR Clinical Research Functional Profile for EHR systems is based upon the HL7 EHR Work Group’s EHR System Functional Model Release 1, which is also an ANSI-approved American National Standard.
The EHR Clinical Research Functional Profile defines high-level requirements critical for using electronic health record data for regulated clinical research, and provides a roadmap for integrating the information environment that must support both the patient care and the downstream clinical research processes. Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, clinical research technology vendor, healthcare technology vendor, and federal regulatory stakeholders from the United States and the European Union collaborated for two years to identify and address a broad list of data protection, regulatory and ethical research requirements.

To see the full press release, please click here.

DeepDyve: Like iTunes for Scientific and Medical Papers

DeepDyve: Like iTunes for Scientific and Medical Papers & Research

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