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Boston, Mass. - Leading health care information technology (IT) researchers, physicians, and renowned experts in innovation today released a set of core principals to guide the creation of a new health information infrastructure to better support the nation's complex and evolving health system. The principles follow up on a Perspective piece published in The New Journal of Medicine in March, authored by researchers at the Informatics Program at Children's Hospital Boston. The article argued for the development of a platform model that would support an ecosystem of "substitutable" health care applications.
"This model is similar in nature to the approach of the Apple iPhone, which has a general platform and more than 20,000 applications that consumers can download and use/replace as desired," said Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, co-author of the NEJM paper. "This is remarkably different from the manner in which current health IT systems have been designed and implemented to-date and would give clinicians the freedom to customize their systems to better meet the unique needs of their patients and practices."
Inspired by the significant response to their concept of creating a platform for health IT, Kohane and Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, convened a working group at the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics to create a clear set of "next steps" for fostering the development of such a platform.
"As the nation considers health reform, addressing the underlying technology infrastructure will be an essential part of the process," said Mandl. "Investment in a platform that is flexible and nimbly able to evolve would inspire the next generation of health IT. Basic fundamental properties like substitutability and interoperability, we believe, will enable innovation, evolution and significantly transform the fields of medicine and science."
The ten core principles, as well as a statement drafted by the working group and a list of all participants, is publically available on the Children's Hospital Informatics Program Web site at www.chip.org/platform.
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