New and Noteworthy

February 2013 - New Children's Electronic Health Record Format Announced

The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business served as a subcontractor to Westat on a project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop a model electronic health record (EHR) format designed to meet the needs of providers who treat children. The project focused on developing a set of comprehensive functional requirements that an EHR should meet to perform optimally for the particular needs of children and those vested in their care.

"The EHR market has developed products largely targeted at adults, with limited attention to the unique needs of children. The model format is an important step in serving this critical set of patients" said Dr. Ritu Agarwal, CHIDS Director and Professor of Information Systems at the Smith School. The CHIDS team supported development of several topic areas, participated in prototyping of the format and analyzing format conformance across existing EHR designs.

The format includes a set of requirements and data standards that can be used as a blueprint for EHR developers seeking to create a product that meets the needs of those who provide healthcare to children. The functional requirements include detailed descriptions of data elements, functions, and specifications required of an EHR system to support recording, processing, decision support, and reporting upon patient encounters. It is expected that EHR vendors will include these features into their system in order to be better equipped to take care of children. Read more.

October 2012 - 3rd Annual Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE 2012)

The University of Maryland's Center for  Health Information and Decision Systems welcomed prominent scholars, policy makers and others to Washington, DC for two days featuring the latest research at the intersection of health IT and economics.  Despite IT’s potential to transform healthcare delivery, significant challenges remain regarding design, implementation, utilization, and evaluation. These issues which are being actively explored in fields as diverse as medical informatics, computer science, public health, business, and economics were brought forward. New ideas with both policy and business implications were stimulated. Synergies generated from integration across disciplines deepened our understanding of health IT design and its resultant impact. Thanks to all our outstanding speakers, contributors, guests and sponsors! Read more and photos

May 2012 - University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory features Medical Informatics Workshop

HCIL's 29th Annual Symposium featured a Medical Informatics Workshop which drew participants from a number of disciplines across the public, private and academic sectors. Well-designed Electronic Health Record systems are crucial to effective adoption by clinical practitioners and to improving the quality of medical care. A challenge for medical informatics interface designers is to enable users to benefit from the increasing abundance information in a way that supports creative and effective decision making. Novel strategies in interface design and information visualization are needed. The workshop had in-depth discussions and presentations of the work of collaborators and external researchers working on interfaces for Electronic Health Records. Read more and photos. Read more and photos

April 2012  - Facebook-Like Approach to Helping Critically Ill Babies Wins University of Maryland Smith School Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge

College Park, Md. - An online platform to improve outcomes for sick babies by better engaging parents in their care drew first place in the Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge, a collegiate competition based on radically improving healthcare through new processes that are enabled by innovative information technology applications and supported by a sustainable market strategy.

"NeoStream," developed by graduate students in the Biomedical Informatics Department in the Stanford University School of Medicine, captured top-prize at the recent Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge hosted by Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Read more and photos