Blogposium -- April 18 - 21 2006
The Blogposium will be a multi-day collaboration among a circle of health-IT bloggers to show the world that together, we can do real and practical work. To make this first-ever, cross-blog cooperative experiment a success, we'll keep the work and the objective relatively simple: to continue fleshing out The Clinical Informatics Wiki with a dozen or more new entries, so that this wikipedia-like resource will become more useful for all. (Ed. Everyone is encouraged to participate as either a writer or reviewer.)

CalRHIO Data Standards Recommendations
CalRHIO’s data standards roadmap provides a guide for health care organizations as they purchase new or upgrade current health information technology. It is also intended to assist health IT vendors in upgrading and developing products. The roadmap illustrates the current data standard in use and the standard expected to be in use by 2010 and beyond. Nine areas are addressed: administration and finance, allergies, clinical documentation, imaging, immunization, laboratory, medication, services, and vocabulary.

Arizona Health-e Connection Steering Committee delivers its Roadmap for the future of electronic health records
The Roadmap outlines a path for Arizona’s health care community to securely exchange medical information statewide with the goal of reducing costs and improving the quality of patient care in Arizona. The Roadmap also sets the stage for the advent of electronic medical records in the future. The Roadmap was developed with participation from over 200 Arizonans representing health care providers, payers and patients with strong representation from rural constituencies.

Taking the Least of You -- The Tissue-Industrial Complex
This is a fascinating article about how various healthcare organizations and researchers have abused patients' generousity. For example, in 1999 the RAND Corporation published a report with what it called a "conservative estimate" that more than 307 million tissue samples from more than 178 million people were stored in the United States. This number, the report said, was increasing by more than 20 million samples each year. These samples come from routine medical tests, operations, clinical trials and research donations. (Ed. And we are concerned with the "personal information" stored in various clinical information systems? I think our worries are misplaced!)