> ------------Original Message------------ > From: Andrew Ho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "David Forslund" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: "OpenHealth List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Fri, Oct-22-2004 12:50 PM > Subject: Re: Medical Record Location(s) was: Virtual Privacy Machine - reprise > > On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:22:10 -0600, David Forslund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > ... > > > Right - of course, we still need a reliable way to > > > transfer/synchronize records between different doctors' offices, > > > hospitals, etc. MPI is exactly designed to serve that function - > but > > > there are other ways to do it. > > > > More than an MPI is needed. Tags as to the origin of the data need > > to be provided in some way so that data duplicates can be handled. > These > > are distinct from the process of identifying the patient. > > David, > Good point! > It seems to me that we really must get together and work on this. > Maybe via the hxp effort? http://hxp.sourceforge.net/
Perhaps, but this seems to have a particular technology in mind and goes down some paths that were tried by HL7 (SIGOBT) and rejected. I worry that it doesn't take into account what was learned from previous efforts or trying to engage the broader community. It seems to be settling on some specific implementations rather than the broader standards issues. OpenHRE is taking a little different and higher level approach, where it lays out the issues and tries to encourage discussion on these issues. It sets up some use cases and tries to carefully define some of the problems to be handled. There is room for each of these approaches (HXP and OpenHRE) but they aren't exclusive nor should they be thought of as exhaustive. Efforts to work with larger bodies should be encouraged, in particular, the NHII community and the various participants there. Unless one gets the buy in of HHS, for example, there is little hope of this going anywhere. Dave > > ... > > > What ends up happening in the absence of a "master" patient index > > > (MPI) is that we use record-location, date of birth, SSN, + name to > > > serve the record matching function. This is the current state of > the > > > field. It has advantages and disadvantages - but adopting > electronic > > > medical records systems (EMR) does not mean we have to adopt MPI. > > > > Well if every location or system uses a different identification > mechanism > > it makes the patient identification even harder, in my opinion. You > are effectively > > adopting an MPI process. Having a relatively more uniform process > and > > separating out the service explicitly would make it all much easier. > > I agree. > Maybe we can work out a sufficiently uniform process and implement > it in our respective software packages? > > Best regards, > > Andrew > -- > Andrew P. Ho, M.D. > OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes > www.TxOutcome.Org > >
