As you design, market, and distribute a mobile health (mHealth) app that your customers will use to collect, share, use, or maintain individuals’ health information, it is likely you have questions about what U.S. federal laws apply. You may also wonder which federal agencies oversee various aspects of mHealth — including how this varies by how individuals, their health plan, or health care providers will use the app.  Depending on who is expected to use an app and how they will get and use the app (e.g.,

The post Guiding Developers through Foundational Federal Laws Applicable to Mobile Health Technology appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

As we’ve previously discussed, algorithms—step by step instructions (rules) to perform a task or solve a problem, especially by a computer—have been widely used in health care for decades.  One clear use of these algorithms is through evidence-based, clinical decision support interventions (DSIs). Today, we see a rapid growth in data-based, predictive DSIs, which use models created using machine learning (ML) algorithms or other statistical approaches that analyze large volumes of real-world data (called “training data”) to find patterns and make recommendations.

The post Two Sides of the AI/ML Coin in Health Care appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

The same basic technology that can predict what movie you might want to watch, what song you might want to listen to, or what item you might want to buy online, can also predict the onset of diseases, forecast costs of care, and recommend treatment options for your doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.
Algorithms are not new to health care. Indeed, an important and long-standing part of our Health Information Technology (Health IT) Certification Program has included Clinical Decision Support (CDS) certification criterion covering “rules-based” algorithms and software systems that use rules derived by experts,

The post Getting the Best out of Algorithms in Health Care appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

New ONC research shows a more than 20% rise in the number of apps that integrate with certified electronic health records (EHRs).
A manuscript highlighting the findings of this research was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: “The Ecosystem of Apps and Software integrated with Certified Health Information Technology”. Our study analyzed apps that were discoverable in app galleries managed by EHR developers – Allscripts,

The post Research Results Published: More Apps are Integrating with EHRs appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

New ONC research shows a more than 20% rise in the number of apps that integrate with certified electronic health records (EHRs).
A manuscript highlighting the findings of this research was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: “The Ecosystem of Apps and Software integrated with Certified Health Information Technology”. Our study analyzed apps that were discoverable in app galleries managed by EHR developers – Allscripts,

The post Research Results Published: More Apps are Integrating with EHRs appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

Health IT has helped drive progress in health care over the last decade, but it has also introduced a variety of different challenges, many reported by the clinical community. As we explored in our latest article published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, ONC and other federal partners have taken and continue to take steps to reduce clinician burden when using health IT. 
As adoption of health IT has increased, we have seen firsthand how usability issues associated with the underlying software, 

The post Reducing the Clinician Burden: Shaping Health IT as an Asset appeared first on Health IT Buzz.