Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Healthcare Interface Design Distance Learning Course

First 10x10 offering from The University of Texas to begin July 11, 2011!
Virtual

July 11, 2011 - September 30, 2011
School: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Online Course
$2,000
AMIA 10x10 Partner
 
The School of Biomedical Informatics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will be offering its Healthcare Interface Design Distance Learning Course as part of the AMIA 10x10 program.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s contribution to the AMIA 10x10 is an online course that focuses on EMR, human-computer interaction, human factors and Health IT usability.
This on-line interactive course will allow the student to master the fundamental principles and methods in health interface design, learn how to evaluate the usability of existing systems, and also learn how to design new systems with built-in good usability by applying related theories, principles, methodologies and techniques.
The AMIA-UTH 10x10 course is intended for Health IT professionals, CIO’s, CMIO’s, system developers and programmers, researchers and informaticians, physicians, nurses, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other healthcare professionals. The registrant should have an educational background in health sciences, computer science, informatics, or other related areas.
This first offering of the UTH 10x10 course will not have CME or CE's available.  CME's may be available for this course the next time it is offered.

Director

Jiajie Zhang Jiajie Zhang external link is the Dr. Doris L. Ross Professor and the Associate Dean for Research at the School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is the Principal Investigator of the ONC funded SHARP project on Patient-Centered Cognitive Support and the Co-Director of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare. He is also the Director of Usability at the Texas Gulf Coast Regional Extension Center for Health IT. Dr. Zhang is an elected Fellow of American College of Medical Informatics. He will serve as the Director of the AMIA-UTH 10x10 program.
Dr. Zhang has spent the past two decades doing research in biomedical informatics, human-centered design, decision making, and information visualization. He has authored more than 130 publications. He has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on dozens of grants from ONC, NASA, Office of Naval Research, Army, NIH, James S. McDonnell Foundation, State of Texas, and other funding agencies.
This 10x10 course is based on the Healthcare Interface Design course Dr. Zhang has taught at the University of Texas at Houston for more than 13 years. Dr. Zhang has been teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels for nearly 20 years, having taught courses in human-computer interaction, information visualization, and technology-mediated social dynamics, cognitive science, and computer modeling. Dr. Zhang has supervised or co-supervised nearly twenty PhD students and over sixty master’s students. Dr. Zhang was a recipient of John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Zhang Responds to Lohr's NYT Commentary “Seeing Promise and Peril in Digital Records”

Dear Mr Lohr:
Thank you for your recent article submitted in the NY Times regarding the Electronic Health Records (EHR) usability work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Respectfully, however, I must draw your attention to another obvious comparison and offer a considerate rebuttal to the statement that usability stifles innovation.
The aviation industry has produced innovations from simple checklists for various procedures to advanced head-up displays that present data to cockpit windshields without requiring pilots to look away from their usual viewpoints – all with the goal of improving aviation safety by sound usability science. The risk of harm in aviation has been significantly reduced by these sound methods. Healthcare is a high risk industry requiring unrelenting pursuit for safer solutions to complex patient care. In healthcare there is a sad history where well-meaning intentions have produced deadly consequences and we must wake every day to the fact that 98,000 patients are unintentionally harmed each year. While electronic records hold the promise for a safer future – they will not reach that promise without standards for basic usability that follows scientific and objectively measureable usability principles.

I can’t help but ask which usability principles the opposition rejects? What we are suggesting is simple, measurable and repeatable. If they have truly spent time in the science and applied these principles to their products – they should be happy to see this effort. If they have not looked at the science of usability – then perhaps it is time they should. Ultimately it is the vendors who control the destiny of their products.
We openly invite all the EHR vendors and stakeholders to our table. We support your innovation. SHARPC, funded by the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT, is open to your participation, your collaboration, and your success- come visit us, take a usability course, get your products tested, collaborate with us on usability improvement of your products, or send a student or an intern to our program – ask us a question – we stand ready to assist you in the vital mission of keeping patients safe by making your products more useful, more usable, and more satisfying.

Respectfully,

Jiajie Zhang, PhD
Principal Investigator, SHARPC Project on Patient-Centered Cognitive Support
Co-Director, National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare
Professor & Associate Dean for Research, University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics at Houston

This letter is in response to Steve Lohr’s commentary “Seeing Promise and Peril in Digital Records”, published in the New York Times electronically on July 16, 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/technology/assessing-the-effect-of-standards-in-digital-health-records-on-innovation.html?ref=stevelohr&pagewanted=all) and in print on July 17, 2011 on page BU3 of the New York edition.

Friday, July 15, 2011

OIG Chief Counsel Lewis Morris Testifies on the Role of New Technology in Fighting Health Care Fraud

On Tuesday, July 12, 2011, Lewis Morris, Chief Counsel to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services testified before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security about the role new technologies can play in cutting waste and fraud in the Federal health care programs.

To read more, please follow the link:
http://oig.hhs.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2011/lew-testimony.asp