HMS’ Modular Certification Assists Hospitals in Achieving MU Compliance

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HMS is currently working toward receiving Modular Certification (Public Health Surveillance) for its Mergence platform.  This will assist hospitals in achieving Meaningful Use Compliance—without requiring facilities to change their current EpiCenter or EpiStart data feeds.

The key to this certification is the utilization of HMS’ Mergence data integration engine. Mergence, which is a service provided to a medical facility, was the first open source integration engine to work with HL7 and general XML data types. While the first generation of Mergence was open source, today’s Mergence has been fine-tuned to meet our clients’ needs.  Mergence is suitable to a variety of tasks that HL7 integration engines simply cannot accomplish. Data from Mergence is sent in certified, secure format to HMS’ EpiCenter system.

HMS will be able to route incoming data feeds through the Mergence engine which will then output a data stream, in the HL7 format required by MU2, and onto EpiCenter or EpiStart, thereby meeting the MU2 requirements, and implementation specifications, related to the submission of Syndromic Surveillance data to public health departments.

“Providing this service affirms our commitment to customer service,” states Kevin Hutchison, HMS President and CEO. “It ensures that current—and future—users of the system continue to gain valuable insight and support regarding important issues that impact public health.”

 

ISDS Conference: December 4-5

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This year’s ISDS Conference kicks off December 4 in San Diego, CA. HMS is an event sponsor and we’ll be on hand to talk about syndromic surveillance, community health surveillance, and our products—EpiCenter and EpiStart.

The 2012 conference features industry professionals including Keynotes James H. Fowler, a professor at University of California, San Diego and Bill Davenhall, global marketing manager for health and human services at ESRI, Inc.

We hope to see you there. Check back to read some of our thoughts on the conference.

Superstorm Sandy's Effects on Public Health Are Far From Over

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Superstorm Sandy’s effects may linger longer than expected, from a public health perspective. According to a November 8th article on Accuweather.com, Sandy may have long-term impacts on public health.

The article cites Patrick Kinney of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who states that threats may still emerge – even though the storm is long gone. “This particular storm, I think we’re still learning what the health impacts specifically were,” he states.

Kinney cites patterns similar to previous storms – most initial deaths were from flooding. This was followed by fatalities that occurred due to debris removal, fire, or electrical damage. “From a longer-term perspective, you start looking at things like the effects of the power outage: What does that mean for the spoilage of food? For the contamination of the water supply? You also worry about access to routine medical care,” according to Kinney.

The article also addresses issues such as an inability to access medication in the storm’s aftermath – leading to illness and increased visits to hospital emergency rooms.

Read the complete article here. And check back to read about what we learned by analyzing the community health surveillance data collected by EpiCenter during and after the storm.