✓ ✓ NEWS Top NEWS AHIMA AND AMIA RELEASE BASIC timely, accurate, and secure ex- PRINCIPLES FOR PERSONAL HEALTH change of information across health- RECORD ADOPTION AND USE, AND Drawer care institutions and providers; ISSUE CONSUMER GUIDANCE FOR however, individuals are encour- CONFIDENTIALITY OF PERSONAL aged to use whatever format works HEALTH INFORMATION best, even if the choice is paper. “The important thing is to get Personal health records (PHRs) started,” says Dennis. “Each per- provide a powerful way of helping son can create a PHR at his or her individuals manage their healthcare, own pace, starting with their next but consumers should read the “fine medical visit.” A good place for individuals to print” to understand the privacy • policies of the organization supply- begin is to visit www.MyPHR.com, ing the PHR and the source of the ESSENTIAL a site provided as a free public data stored in the PHR, according to INFORMATION ON service by AHIMA, for information a recent position statement released NEW PRODUCTS on how to create and manage a by the American Health Information SOFTWARE PHR. The Associations suggest PHR Management Association (AHIMA) users find out if healthcare pro- BOOKS and the American Medical Informat- viders, employers, insurers, or another ics Association (AMIA). MEETINGS individual or organization offer a Their recommendations are that INTERNET RESOURCES PHR tool or service. To view the position statement, consumers look for the following • policies and procedures when select- “The Value of Personal Health ing a PHR: privacy and security; the Records,” visit AHIMA’s Web site at ability of the individual, or autho- http://www.ahima.org/dc/positions/. rized surrogates, to access their in- AMIA and AHIMA have also re- formation; individual control over leased a set of basic principles for accessibility; and sources of the data organizations accessing or storing stored in the PHR. personal health information (PHI) “If the PHR contains the same to abide, as follows: information that the doctor has should be consolidated in a seen, it has more usefulness for comprehensive record. • Inform individuals, through clear tracking purposes than infor- • Information in the PHR should be communications, about their mation from insurance forms,” understandable to the individual. rights and obligations and the states Jill Callahan Dennis, JD, • Information in the PHR should laws and regulations governing RHIA, president of AHIMA. “For be accurate, reliable, and protection and use of PHI. example, insurance claims information complete. • Notify individuals in clear may only list some of the diagnoses • Every person should have language about the organization’s or medications and not specific de- control over the ways PHR privacy practices and their rights tails such as blood pressure reading information is used and shared. in cases of breaches. or medication dosage.” • The operator of a PHR must be • Provide individuals with a The position statement also in- accountable to the individual for convenient, affordable mechanism cludes the following basic principles unauthorized use or disclosure to inspect, copy, or amend their to guide PHR adoption and use: of personal health information. identified health information/ • A PHR may be separate from records. • Every person is ultimately and does not normally replace • Protect the confidentiality of PHI responsible for making decisions the legal medical record of any to the fullest extent prescribed about his or her health. provider. under HIPAA, regardless of • Every person should have whether the organization and its access to his or her complete AHIMA and AMIA recommend employees all comply with HIPAA, health information. Ideally it use of electronic media to facilitate state laws, and the policies and

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Copyright © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. ✓ pected to flow across organizational CALENDAR Top Drawer boundaries through the nationwide health information network (NHIN). To view the position statement in 2006 procedures put in place to full, visit AMIA’s Web site at http:// protect PHI. www.amia.org/informatics/public_ • Use PHI only for legitimate policy/index.asp#confidentiality. NOVEMBER 2006 purposes as defined under About AMIA HIPAA or applicable laws. AMIA is an organization of 3500 November 2–4, 2006, NLN • Prohibit the use of PHI for health professionals committed to Educational Technology discriminatory practices, informatics who are leaders, shaping Conference, Baltimore, MD. including those related to the future of health information Sponsored by the National League insurance coverage or technology and its application in the for Nursing, 61 Broadway, employment decisions. United States and 41 other nations. New York, NY 10006. For more • Timely notification of individuals information, call 800-669-1656 or AMIA is dedicated to the develop- if security breaches have visit the Web site at ment and application of informatics compromised the confidentiality http://www.nln.org/profdev/ in support of patient care, teaching, workshopsandconf.htm. of their PHI. research, and healthcare administra- • Work with appropriate law tion and public policy. For more in- November 26–29, 2006, e-Health enforcement to prosecute to the formation, visit www.amia.org. for All Developed and maximum extent allowable by About AHIMA Developing Countries: Common law any individual or organization AHIMA has 50,000 members dedi- Issues—Universal Solutions? who intentionally misuses PHI. Eleventh Annual International cated to the effective management of • Continuously improve processes, Society for Telemedicine and personal health information needed procedures, education, and e-Health Conference, Cape to deliver quality healthcare to the technology so that PHI practices Town, South Africa. Sponsored by public. Founded in 1928 to improve improve over time. the International Society for the quality of medical records, Telemedicine and e-Health, the AHIMA is committed to advancing South African Medical Research Basic principles need to be incor- the health information management Council, the South African porated in all rules, regulations, or profession in an increasingly elec- Presidential National Commission, laws pertaining to PHI if it is ex- tronic and global environment and the South African Department ✓ through leadership in advocacy, edu- of Health. For more information cation, certification, and lifelong and to register, visit the Web site at learning. For more information, visit http://www.mrc.ac.za/conference/ www.ahima.org. satelemedicine/index.htm.

2007 Your contributions to Top Drawer (news, calendar items, products for review) AUGUST 2007 are welcome. Send them to: August 20–24, 2007, MedInfo 2007: Triennial Meeting of the International Medical CIN: Editorial Office Informatics Association, 10A Beach St, Suite 2 Brisbane, Australia. Hosted by the Portland, ME 04101 Health Informatics Society of Telephone: 207-553-7750 Australia and sponsored by the International Medical Informatics Fax: 207-553-7751 Association, 5782-172 Street, E-mail: [email protected] Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6M CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE… 1B4. Telephone: 780-489-4531; William Perry, MA, RN, is Adjunct e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: Instructor, Wright State University, http://www.medinfo2007.org. Dayton, OH.

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Copyright © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. ✓ NOTES FROM THE NET NOMAD . . . The Internet has brought the spirit of global commu- stant messaging (IM). Unlike recipients of some nication and collaboration to nurses and other health- “pushed” information, the aggregator user can easily care professionals in ways never before thought possible. unsubscribe from a feed.” These resources are offered to expand your opportuni- There are both standalone and Web-based readers. ties for discussion, reference, education and research. I like the Web-based readers such as Bloglines There’s been quite a bit of information floating about (http://www.bloglines.com/) because your personally the Web about using a technique called RSS (Really collected content is available from any computer at- Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary) to create auto- tached to the Internet. It could be your own computer, matically updating Web pages that draw information a friend’s computer, or even a computer at the public from a wide variety of sources. These could include Web library. Bloglines enables you to create a custom collec- logs (blogs), current journal tables of content, PubMed tion of news items, blog feeds, podcasts and e-mail searches, and even podcasts. newsletters. It’s a great way to read a wide variety of The most traditional method of reading these self up- content all in one place. Google has an feature called the dating articles is to use a piece of software called a news “Google Reader” that allows you to create similar custom aggregator or feed reader. From the Wikipedia content (http://www.google.com/help/faq_reader.html). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator: “Aggregators CIN has published articles about RSS feeds and blogs reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check in the past such as : Yensen. J, (2005). Leveraging RSS Websites for updates, creating a unique information feeds to support current awareness. Computers, Infor- space or “personal newspaper.” Once subscribed to a matics, Nursing. 23(3):164–167 and Maag, M (2005). feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at The potential use of “blogs” in nursing education. user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. The 23(1):16–26. Go back and look at these tremendous ar- content is sometimes described as being “pulled” to the ticles to get a more in depth view of the hows and whys subscriber, as opposed to “pushed” with e-mail or in- of RSS and blogs.

Personalized home page on Pageflakes (www.pageflakes.com).

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Copyright © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. ✓ NOTES FROM THE NET NOMAD . . . There are several sites on the Internet offering free 2006/07/how-to-generate-pubmed-rss-feeds.html, I’ve personalized home pages. Microsoft has Windows Live created one at: http://www.pageflakes.com/wfperry. http://www.live.com/, Google has a personalized page at ashx?page=3531055 that demonstrates a current journal http://www.google.com/ig, Pageflakes at http://www. (Computers, Informatics, Nursing), two online journals pageflakes.com/, Netvibes at http://www.netvibes.com/ (Journal of Medical Internet Research and The Infor- plus several others. All offer the ability to customize a matics Review) and PubMed search on Nursing page with news, weather, RSS feeds, bookmarks, and Informatics and a list of bookmarks. other useful and fun tools. A very useful feature of Think this approach might be useful in your hospital Pageflakes is the ability to make your personal pages staff development program or university course? I’ve available to others. A disadvantage of Pageflakes is its begun exploring the possibilities with our medical inability to subscribe to podcasts. (a podcast is essen- library and university library of making specialty specific tially an audio blog). You’d be off with Google Reader, pages for both medicine and nursing. The combinations Bloglines or iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/ for and possibilities are what the Internet is all about. subscribing to podcasts. Inspired by blog postings at http://casesblog.blogspot. com/2006/06/make-your-own-medical-journal- with.html and http://kraftylibrarian.blogspot.com/ Contributed by William Perry, MA, RN

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Copyright © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.