This week I’ve been enjoying connecting with leaders in the healthcare interoperability, security, identity, and innovation community that includes members of DirectTrust along with the broader cross section of leaders in the space. The timing of the conference is particularly good as it comes right after the big CMS interoperability announcement. No doubt that announcement has been a big part of many conversations at the conference, but alongside those conversations have been some really practical discussions around interoperability that’s already happening, identity management that’s already in place, and how to secure all that data that’s being shared.
While DirectTrust’s origin is in direct secure messaging, the conference definitely has a much expanded vision that includes many other topics especially since DirectTrust’s merger with EHNAC.
Throughout the conference I was capturing some of the interesting insights and perspectives that were shared on stage. The following are some of those insights along with some added commentary.
The kickoff for the DirectTrust conference was quite interesting. Hearing about why Haven Health didn’t work was eye opening. The biggest takeaway for me was that the 3 massive organizations behind it each had a different vision for what they wanted to achieve. Without the alignement it was kind of doomed to fail from the beginning. Money certainly isn’t the only ingredient needed to change healthcare.
If you’ve been following the news about certification, you’ve seen ONC/ASTP’s shift to APIs. It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out, but I think it’s going to be a big change for EHR vendors and will hopefully open up the EHR and health IT world for more innovation.
This report from ONC on data sharing really illustrates how much data sharing is hapening in healthcare. Plus, it’s impressive to see how many direct messages are being shared. As I mention above though, it also shows how much work there is to do since mail and fax are still so popular.
Being at the DirectTrust conference is eye opening from a policy perspective. This panel was a great example since it included the people who wrote HIPAA and Information Blocking. The point one of them made about thinking how the language in policy will be used by different administrations is a really important point that you only know if you have experience making policy.
I loved this perspective on what government should work on. That’s why a long time ago I suggested that meaningful use should have focused on interoperability since it didn’t have natural incentives. And I agree with Jodi Daniels that if the CMS announcement in Washington could address identity management and a provider directoy, those would both be big wins.
This debate was fun, but not quite as spicy as last year. It was quite interesting to force them to play both sides of the argument. Although, the most valuable part of the debate may have actually been at the end where they shared what they really think. I think the audience seemed to agree with Ryan Howells who said that the private sector should lead and kind of prove it out and then government can support that initial private effort to really accelerate the adoption across the full industry.
This share on social media has probably gotten the most attention. It was made during a panel discussing a security tabletop exercise that was done at the conference. One CISO on stage said that they would turn off the EHR every month so that they had a true test of what it would be like to not have access to the EHR (breach, downtime, internet issues, etc). Based on the comments I got, many CIO and CISO leaders were intrigued by the idea. We also thought that every month was probably too often. Plus, it’s not clear how you get buy in for something like this.
The above comment was in response to when to involve the lawyers in the discussion when a breach occurs. It was a good comment that lawyers should help you navigate the law while a CISO should help you navigate the tech and security side of things. It’s good to do the practice breach so you get an idea of how your lawyer will respond though.
Check out the DirectTrust site to see what I mean as far as all the things that they do. I like how they’ve broken it up on their website into Standards, Accreditation, and Trust services. They’re a lot more than just direct messaging now.
If you’re not familiar with Patient ID Now, you probably should check it out. They’re working hard to get the national patient identifier block removed along with other patient matching efforts.
One of the first things I discovered when I got in healthcare 20 years ago was facial recognition. It had so much potential in my mind, but over these 2 decades it’s come a long way. Seeing what FaceTec has done to innovate in this space with a 3D Liveness approach to biometrics is really interesting and something a lot more health IT companies should consider. I have a video coming soon that will dive into this topic a lot more.
Thanks to the amazing team at DirectTrust for creating an wonderful event with a high quality group of people to learn from and connect to. The content was fresh and creative. The food was excellent. Sitting in the shadow of the St. Louis arch is inspiring. It was great to learn from so many smart people that want to improve healthcare.
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