The health care industry is constantly evolving, and now more than ever, it's critical to stay current on the issues, legislation and innovations that are shaping the conversation. The thought leaders featured on The Cerner Podcast are some of the foremost voices in the industry, and we have the pleasure of welcoming some of them to the Cerner Health Conference 2017 (CHC).
Here, we've compiled five podcasts featuring speakers and topics that will be highlighted at this year's CHC, taking place from Oct. 9 - 12 in Kansas City.
1. Why Should I Care about SMART on FHIR? How Industry Open Standards are Changing the Way Health Care is Delivered (Power Session)
Grahame Grieve, inventor and product director of the HL7 FHIR Standard
Dr. Josh Mandel, architect for SMART Health IT, Harvard Medical School, Health IT Ecosystem Lead, Verily
The inventor of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Grahame Grieve, and the lead architect on the Substitutable Medical Apps & Reusable Technology (SMART) Health IT platform, Josh Mandel, are coming together for a one-of-a-kind session that will explore how standards like SMART Health IT and the Health Level Seven (HL7) FHIR standard are changing the world of health care. Grieve will discuss the background of these open standards, and Mandel will discuss how health care organizations can meet patient expectations with this new technology.
In episode 5 of The Cerner Podcast, FHIR and Aggregating Health Data, Grieve provides a global view on the impact of FHIR standards on interoperability.
"There's lots of issues with changing the health care system, it's not just about the standard," he says. "But I always saw the standard as an enabler. Without a standard to create the network effects, there's no possibility of cultural change."
2. Implications of the CommonWell-Carequality Collaboration (Session #941)
In December 2016, CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality announced their exciting agreement to collaborate to share data. In this session, speakers will discuss what this means for advancing interoperability, expectations for health careorganizations, benefits of this collaboration and what to look forward to in the near future.
We featured Jitin Asnaani of CommonWell Health Alliance in our first episode of The Cerner Podcast, The Current State of Interoperability. In this episode, he discusses where interoperability is now and the challenges it faces in the future.
"In trying to manage a patient's care, as you've gone further and further away from one integrated location for your care, the spaces between the care locations have become just as important as the care locations themselves," Asnaani says. "Interoperability helps tie that fabric together."
3. Aligned and Informed: How Health Care Cybersecurity Communities Can Help Protect Patients from the Threats of Tomorrow (Power Session)
Russell Branzell, president and CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Executives
Joanne Sexton, Cyber Institute director at Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center
Scott Breece, vice president of security and chief information security officer at Community Health Systems
Gerry Lewis, senior vice president and chief information officer at Ascension Health and CEO at Ascension Information Services
This panel will explore the importance of developing aligned cybersecurity communities to facilitate information sharing as cybersecurity threats grow across the health care industry. The recent Petya Ransomware and WannaCry attacks have demonstrated the importance of leveraging information across trusted partners to quickly identify and protect health care organizations against new threats, as well as to effectively respond to active threats in the environment and mitigate impact.
Russell Branzell was a guest on episode 6 of The Cerner Podcast, Cybersecurity and Protecting Patient Data. Here, he discusses some of the biggest cyber threats to health care, as well as barriers and challenges to protecting patient information.
"What are we seeing at our members' level? When they think they have dozens or hundreds of attacks, they're actually having thousands and hundreds of thousands of attacks - not a month, a day," says Branzell.
4. Building and Integrating SMART on FHIR Applications
Kevin Shekelton, vice president and distinguished engineer at Cerner
Open standards, like SMART Health IT and the HL7 FHIR standard, are encouraging a new level of collaboration and innovation within the health IT industry. In this session, Kevin Shekelton will deliver a presentation on the technical aspects of Cerner Ignite APIs for Millennium and how to leverage open source libraries to reduce the complexity of building SMART applications. He'll also explore another emerging standard, Clinical Decision Support Hooks (CDS Hooks), that could potentially add considerable power for developers and clinical communities alike.
Shekleton has been involved in the collaborative industry effort to advance CDS Hooks as a standard. In episode 32 of The Cerner Podcast, How Open Standards Foster Collaboration in Health IT, Kevin discusses how open standards benefit the HIT industry.
"We should see additional innovation in the decision support space similar to what we've seen with SMART on FHIR apps, where you've got all these companies who are creating new workflows or functionality and they have a means to incorporate them into the EHR," Shekelton says.
5. Using Technology to Address the Opioid Crisis and Behavioral Health (Session #855)
More than 90 Americans die every day after overdosing on opioids. This crisis has health organizations taking a serious look at their behavioral health programs and seeking innovations through technology to improve their community's health. In this session, speakers from multiple health care systems will discuss how their organizations are strategically addressing the opioid crisis and attacking this problem head on.
In episode 12 of The Cerner Podcast, Addiction and the Opioid Epidemic, Tripp Jennings, chief value and informatics officer at Palmetto Health, takes a closer look at the economic impact of addiction and what health care providers can do to prevent this upward trend.
"This is really affecting us throughout the day in the emergency department," Jennings says. "It's really turned into a national epidemic, but we had to recognize [the problem] first, and I think we're finally at that point."
CHC is Cerner's annual, industry-leading health care event, taking place this year from Oct. 9-12 at the Kansas City Convention Center. To learn more or to register for the conference and sign up for education sessions, visit the CHC website.
