With AT&T's lack of ethics and willingness to spy on citizens, is this just an opportunity for them to install another secret room for the purpose of spying on our medical records?

See also this article about the secret room.

Doug McCaughan
(link...)

Good info. Thanks. I really don't want AT&T handling medical records. At least all they are doing is pretty much providing the backbone.

Actually Covisint is a security system to insure the only people with access to the system are doctors who are authorized, and it also provides an audit trail on access and use. The auto industry and the Dept of Defense are among their other customers. What we are actually doing is using the state's private production network as the backbone, and ATT currently manages that, although it is up for rebid. The trick is getting the doctors onto the system. In order to do that we are using grants for equipment, software and connectivity. In return for that the doctors agree to eprescribe for two years. Think email in 1995. Once the system is in place, it can be used for imaging (xrays, etc.), remote diagnosis, electronic medical records (eventually), all kinds of things. But we are trying to get this started in stages. Thanks.

Dave, thanks for the additional info and background. If you're so inclined, I had a couple of other questions.

Do the grants provide doctors any software for EMR, or just the connectivity?

Is the eprescription a standardized software application that will be provided with this, or is it part of whatever practice software they use? Are there technical/interoperability standards for it?

Is the idea to promote participation by physicians, clinics, and hospitals in the existing regional HIE systems such as CareSpark, Innovation Valley Health Information Network, Midsouth eHealth Alliance, and Shared Health?

Is there any thought to merging these networks into a statewide network at some point in the future? With so many different EMR systems, is that even practical? Or needed? Is a regional solution better?

I'm all for EMR and easy, secure access by physicians, clinics, and hospitals. I hope this new network will help move that along...

P.S. Thanks for participating here, and welcome.

See, just five minutes later Bill Lyons advises that his proper title is "Senior Director of Policy and Communications" for the City of Knoxville. Sorry 'bout that Bill, er, Director Lyons. :)

And its release was designed for Monday morning consumption.
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HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL 12:01 a.m. EST MONDAY. THIS STORY MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST OR POSTED ONLINE BEFORE 12:01 a.m. EST MONDAY

I guess I'm confused. Why should it matter that the release was embargoed? In my experience, embargoed means that you hold it for publication, but it doesn't stop the staff from working on the story. Maybe the question is why they wanted it embargoed. It doesn't look to me like it was doing anything other than guaranteeing a spot on a historically slow news day.

I'm also a bit perplexed about the reluctance of doctors etc to move to electronic records. Maybe my problem is that I was part of a trial run by my doctor in Little Rock as long as 20 years ago. He wrote his own program for his beloved macs, and off he went. By the time I moved about four years ago, the program covered the entire clinic -- 10 docs and a couple of nurse practitioners -- and they were doing eprescriptions. His mac program had also been adapted for PC's and was off and running in other parts of the city and state.

I'm glad Tennessee is working in that direction.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Um, I guess I am me. and Dave is fine. I don't get on here much, hence the delayed response.

As to your questions:

"Do the grants provide doctors any software for EMR, or just the connectivity?" A: What the doctor wants is up to him. The $3500 is for hardware and software. If someone had a wirelss system with a tablet pc already, they might use it to bootstrap into an EMR system, which can be expensive. We have heard of some EMR companies developing an EMR lite to go along with this grant. There is eprescribing software available, or they can use their own, as long as it is compliant with standards. The connectivity is what is important, and then they can use it at whatever level of sophistication they are comfortable with. There is up to $6000 per site to pay for connectivity, a fully managed network solution including a router in the office. We also are working with Community Health Network and their recent $7.9M FCC grant aimed at not for profits and clinics, particularly rural ones.

"Is the eprescription a standardized software application that will be provided with this, or is it part of whatever practice software they use? Are there technical/interoperability standards for it?" See above. We are following SureScripts standards for eprescribing, and all recent EMR software is compliant. We also are compliant with federal standards for EMRs.

"Is the idea to promote participation by physicians, clinics, and hospitals in the existing regional HIE systems such as CareSpark, Innovation Valley Health Information Network, Midsouth eHealth Alliance, and Shared Health?" We are definitely working with the existing RHIOs and trying to grow more. This can be the pipe through which people access those RHIOs.

"Is there any thought to merging these networks into a statewide network at some point in the future? With so many different EMR systems, is that even practical? Or needed? Is a regional solution better?" Our philosophy here is that we should provide infrastructure and follow along with national standards on interoperability. I am not smart enough to pick who will win the EMR race. Regional solutions do tend to work better, as people trust other people they know, a critical part of building a system. But if I have a car wreck in Knoxville, it would be nice for the ER to have access to my records.