Emerging Consensus to Create a 'Health Internet' With Broad Consumer Engagement

Harvard meeting explores how health information technology can be modeled on
"iPhone-like" platform to spur innovation and reduce costs

BOSTON, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As government, industry and academic
leaders work to transform the nation's health information system, there is
increasing interest in the notion of a national health information network in
which consumers can actively engage, and which can provide the foundation for
an "iPhone-like" ecosystem of applications to compete on price and value. In
such an ecosystem, purchasers of applications -- whether physicians and
hospitals buying electronic health records, or patients and consumers buying
technology to support wellness and disease management -- would be able to
easily substitute any application for any other.

Assembled at a conference hosted by Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard
Medical School, more than 100 thought leaders, including representatives from
the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Health and Human
Services, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and a diverse array of companies,
universities, and organizations, explored innovative ways to transform the
national Health IT system.

Kenneth Mandl, a physician and researcher at Children's Hospital Boston and
associate professor at Harvard Medical School, explains: "If health
information technology evolves to provide platforms that permit physician
practices, hospitals, or patients to pick and choose from a 'store' of
applications that are entirely substitutable, a competitive environment will
emerge that allows for better pricing, more customized applications and
innovations that cannot be anticipated at the moment. Value should be high,
and switching costs low."

Mitch Kapor, founder of the Lotus Corporation and now Senior Advisor on Health
Information Technology at the Center for American Progress, opened the meeting
suggesting that a new "Health Internet" could arise through processes that
parallel those in the personal computer and Internet revolutions. He
highlighted the catalytic role that government played in defining common
protocols for the Internet which enabled the Internet to be created from open
source and proprietary software. He also called out the critical role of
consumer applications in driving growth of the PC and the Internet, throwing
into greater relief the requirements for success of a "Health Internet."

Isaac Kohane, director of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program and
professor at Harvard Medical School elaborates: "The model has proven
successful for personally controlled health record platforms such as the
Indivo system developed at Children's Hospital Boston, Microsoft's
HealthVault, and the GoogleHealth system. These consumer-driven platforms have
attracted development of an ecosystem of third party applications that add
value. Substitutability of healthcare applications gives doctors and patients
choice in what best fits their needs."

Clayton Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School and author of The
Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, strongly
encouraged promotion of disruptive innovation in health information
technology. He spoke about the need to move from current-stage complex
monolithic health information systems toward platforms that distribute
innovation and that engage the consumer. He emphasized that such disruption is
a normal part of product life cycles across many industries and warned against
policies that would stifle it.

Harvard Business School's Professor Regina Herzlinger, author of Who Killed
Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem -- and the Consumer-Driven
Cure, argued that the success of health reform is entirely predicated on
giving the consumer a central role in managing health care finance and also
the health information management tools to promote information transparency
and shared decision-making.

Aneesh Chopra, US Federal Chief Technology Officer, and Todd Park, Chief
Technology Officer of the US Department of Health and Human Services, floated
for feedback the idea of an effort to extend the Nationwide Health Information
Network (NHIN) to include consumer health information platforms, and engage
consumers, privacy experts, and other interested parties in pursuing this
idea. Park described the NHIN as a "Health Internet," which had been from its
founding intended to involve consumers, providers, government organizations,
and others in its fabric. On behalf of the Office of the National Coordinator
for Health IT (ONC) and multiple supportive government organizations,
including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, and
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Park and Chopra asked the
attendees if there was interest in supporting and participating in an effort
to assess current NHIN protocols, adapt them for use by consumer health
information platforms, and address the integration of consumer health
platforms and consumers into the NHIN. Meeting attendees responded with
tremendous enthusiasm. Park and Chopra committed to bring these expressions of
interest back to D.C. and work with ONC on how such an effort could be
mobilized.

In contrast to a platform model with distributed innovation, the health care
system has less than a dozen major vendors whose systems take months to years
to implement, cost thousands to millions -- or tens of millions -- of dollars,
depending on the size of the installation. Most of these systems are
monolithic and difficult to integrate with emerging innovative software.

For more information on the recent meeting at Harvard, as well as information
about previously assembled working groups and platform models, visit:

www.itdothealth.org
www.chip.org/platform
www.indivohealth.org

Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise
based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both
children and adults since 1869. More than 500 scientists, including eight
members of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 members of the Institute of
Medicine and 12 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise
Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children,
Children's Hospital Boston today is a 396-bed comprehensive center for
pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in
patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children
and families. Children's also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of
Harvard Medical School. For more information about the hospital and its
research visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

CONTACT: Rob Graham/Keri Stedman
Children's Hospital Boston
617-919-3110
rob.graham@childrens.harvard.edu
keri.stedman@childrens.harvard.edu

SOURCE Children's Hospital Boston

Rob Graham, rob.graham@childrens.harvard.edu, or Keri Stedman,
keri.stedman@childrens.harvard.edu, both of Children's Hospital Boston,
+1-617-919-3110