Newswise — To tackle the privacy, business, societal, and technical issues surrounding personal health records -- an integral part of the national debate on healthcare reform -- 100 key leaders from industry, academia, medicine and government will come together November 27-28 for the second annual Personally Controlled Health Records Infrastructure (PCHRI 2007) meeting, hosted by the Harvard Medical School's (HMS) Center for Biomedical Informatics.
"The last year has seen real advances in the field -- in particular, the idea of the 'patient- controlled' health record has gained remarkable traction since our first conference," says Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, co-director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and associate professor of Pediatrics at HMS and director of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP). "This year we're continuing our focus on the PCHR platform -- the infrastructure."
The two-day meeting -- co-sponsored by Intel Corporation, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Blue Cross Blue Shield of America and Children's Hospital Boston -- represents a landmark effort to make real progress toward the development of a healthcare information platform that will enable the next generation of consumer-focused wellness, clinical and research applications. Working groups at the invitation-only conference will collaborate across three tracks --business models, safe and healthy populations, and technical standards and challenges.
"With a decade of investment in personally controlled health record technology by the NIH, we believe that this meeting will help bring about a tipping point in development, diffusion and adoption," says Donald Lindberg, MD, director of the National Library of Medicine.
"Giving individuals and families control of their health information is a critical step in helping people protect their health," adds Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Highlights of this year's meeting include a keynote address by Doug Solomon, Chief Technology Strategist at IDEO on day one. With more than 25 years of leadership experience in the information technology industry, Solomon has a particular interest and experience in collaborative technologies that enable greater community engagement and participation. Day two will feature a panel on "Transforming Medicine," which will tackle the issue of creating platforms to drive innovation in healthcare specifically. "The PCHR is widely viewed as a transformative technology for an ailing health care system in need of radical new approaches to cost and quality," says PCHRI 2007 co- chair Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, a faculty member at the HMS Center for Biomedical, as well as a CHIP researcher and physician in Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. Mandl is the scientific lead on the Indivo project, an open source PCHR being used at Children's Hospital Boston and other health care settings, as well as by employees of the founding companies of the Dossia non-profit consortium, including Applied Materials, AT&T, BP America, Inc., , Intel Corporation, Pitney Bowes Inc. and Wal-Mart.
"PCHRI 2006 had a huge impact, leading to the long-term collaboration between the Dossia consortium and Children's Hospital Boston to establish the Indivo system as the national personal health platform," says Colin Evans, president and CEO of Dossia, on behalf of Intel. "Intel is very happy to continue sponsorship of the PCHR dialogue at Harvard Medical School."
For more information about PCHRI 2007, visit: http://www.pchri.org/2007.
For more information on Indivo, visit http://www.indivohealth.org.
Harvard Medical School has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 17 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those affiliates include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Children's Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Forsyth Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center, Immune Disease Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and VA Boston Healthcare System. http://hms.harvard.edu.
Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 500 scientists, including eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and 12 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is a 377-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Children's also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
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