11th December 2008

This week has seen a number of announcements from the electronic medical record sector. eClinicalWorks says that RiverStone Health, which operates the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Montana and serves residents in the Yellowstone valley area, has chosen eClinicalWorks unified electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management (PM) solution to streamline practice operations between four FQHCs employing 69 healthcare providers. In addition to the RiverStone Health clinic sites, the organization is hosting the eClinicalWorks system for three additional FQHCs in Montana: the Butte Community Health Center in Butte; Partnership Health Center in Missoula; and Cooperative Health Center in Helena. Providers will also have access to eClinicalWorks Enterprise Business Optimizer (eBO), Patient Portal and e-prescribing.

“RiverStone Health provides our communities with the best health services available,” said Lil Anderson, president & chief executive officer/health officer of RiverStone Health and chairman of the board for the National Association of Community Health Centers. “By creating a network of four health centers connected by one electronic health records system, we will have greater access to patient information and the ability to coordinate care across our vast state. Ease-of-use, along with sophisticated reporting capabilities, was the primary reason we selected eClinicalWorks.”

The University of Oklahoma College of Nursing has contracted with Medsphere to participate in the new Academic Incubator Program, an effort to help educate students in nursing and medical schools about healthcare IT and clinical informatics.

As part of the program, Medsphere will provide institutions with the company’s OpenVista Open Source electronic health records (EHR), as well as implementation and support services, at a special educational rate. The Academic Incubator Program manifests Medsphere’s belief that direct and early experience with clinical information systems will be increasingly important to medical and nursing students as they become practicing clinicians.

Part of the University of Oklahoma’s Health Sciences Center, the College of Nursing contracted to participate in the Medsphere program to provide students with education in new and emerging technologies by integrating selected healthcare informatics experience into a baccalaureate nursing curriculum.

Through the Academic Incubator Program, University faculty will develop simulated patient data in the OpenVista system for use in clinical courses where students will practice documenting and retrieving data using the EHR system. OpenVista also provides the University’s nursing students with an opportunity not available with proprietary systems: the ability to make contributions to the overall solution and through its contract to actively participate in EHR design and development.

Meanwhile, LogLogic has announced that Visiting Nurse Service of New York – the nation’s largest not-for-profit home health care organization – has chosen LogLogic to supply its mid-market log management system.

LogLogic’s mid-market log management and intelligence appliance will enable Visiting Nurse Service of New York to protect patient records and credit card information for more than 131,000 patients throughout New York City and Westchester and Nassau Counties. During the average day, VNSNY provides home healthcare services to between 30,000 and 35,000 clients and generates an enormous quantity of data, all of which must be tracked, securely stored and easily retrieved.

“As I see it, logging is really the beginning of all computer intelligence,” says Larry Whiteside, Jr., Chief Information Security Officer for VNSNY. “Logging ties into all aspects of computer security, from forensics to incident response and beyond. It’s important to capture and store logs properly to ensure you have a holistic view of your systems, and to enable you to react quickly to any anomalies you might discover.”

“Robust solutions like this usually have a hefty price tag, which can really have an effect on the decision process,” continues Whiteside Jr. “The price point of the MX series allowed me to bring it in-house as part of my overall security strategy, without having to lobby for it.”

In addition to using LogLogic to collect, analyze and report on log files from a myriad of sources, including approximately 4,000 mobile nurses with tablet PCs, 8,000 technology accounts, 325 servers and an additional 3,500 endpoints, the organization has implemented the log management and intelligence solution to meet regulatory compliance requirements for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

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