The Problem with EMRs
An Interview with Scot Silverstein
An adjunct faculty member in healthcare informatics and IT at Drexel University and the former director of its Institute for Healthcare Informatics

Silverstein is a passionate supporter of health IT but he believes much of the current enthusiasm is misplaced, for reasons he highlights at his web site. In particular, he thinks the fervor for electronic medical records resembles the “irrational exuberance” that inflated the dotcom bubble in the 1990s, and he gives his reasons in this interview.

Interview by Brian Robinson.

CalRHIO’s Role
An Interview with CEO Donald Holmquest

Holmquest talks about CalRHIO’s intent to be an information exchange utility for health providers across California, the importance of a solid business plan, lessons learned from the collapse in 2006 of the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange, and why some things have been easier than he expected.

Interview by Brian Robinson.

Transforming Medicaid:
An Interview with CMS’s Rick Friedman

The Medicaid IT chief talks about transforming Medicaid into a modern health care management system that can share case and client information with other related state human service programs.

Interview by Paul McCloskey.

Legislative Linchpin: Privacy Rights
An Interview with Dr. Deborah Peel
Head of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation

Privacy is the linchpin of health IT adoption. In this webcast, Peel discusses why a patient right to privacy is so important, why it doesn’t yet exist, and why she believes Microsoft’s new HealthVault platform could be the defining moment in the campaign for privacy rights.

Interview by Brian Robinson.

Minnesota's big plans: An interview with Cal Ludeman
An interview with Cal Ludeman
Minnesota’s Human Services commissioner and chairman of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Health Cabinet,

Minnesota, which has become one of the leading states in its plans for the use of health IT, recently capped a run of high-profile moves by announcing that it would build one of the largest health information exchanges in the country, due to go online early next year.

Interview by Brian Robinson.

David Brailer Looks Ahead
An interview with David Brailer
Founder of Health Evolution Partners

In this GHIT Newsmaker Webcast, Brailer talks about the balance of government and industry influence on the future of health care, why companies such as Health Evolution Partners are needed and how 2007 will be seen as the beginning of a shakeout in the health IT markets. 

Interview by Brian Robinson.

The outlook for e-prescribing
An interview with Ken Whittemore
Senior vice president of clinical practice integration for SureScripts

Alaska recently became the 50th state to make e- prescribing legal. In this audio interview, Ken Whittemore of SureScripts, which runs the nationwide Pharmacy HIE, talks about the future of e-prescribing and the role government will play in its future. 

Interview by Brian Robinson.

Washington state’s health IT advantage
An interview with Richard Onizuka
Director of health care policy, Health Care Authority, Washington

Although Washington’s health agency only recently published a road map for the state’s investment in health IT, officials there feel it is several steps ahead of many other states because of the extensive private-sector IT infrastructure the state already has. Here, Richard Onizuka, director of health care policy for Washington’s Health Care Authority, talks how conditions on the ground influenced its health IT strategy.

Interview by Brian Robinson.

Health emergencies and the U.S. response 
An interview with Rear Adm. W. Craig Vanderwagen
Assistant secretary for preparedness and response, Health and Human Services Department

Rear Adm. W. Craig Vanderwagen is in the public crosshairs as the first-ever assistant secretary of preparedeness and response at the Health and Human Services Department, a position created in December 2006 with the passage in Congress of a new bioterrorism bill. Here, Vanderwagen talks about the challenges the United States faces in biosurveillance and biodefense, and how IT can help tackle future emergencies. 

Interview by Brian Robinson.

The Call of the 'Intelligent' Health Record
An interview with Peter Elkin, M.D.
Professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine

Most everyone agrees that health IT holds great promise for increasing the quality of care that patients receive, but one of the biggest barriers to adoption has been the disruption many doctors feel it would cause to their businesses. In this Webcast, Dr. Peter Elkin, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, believes a combination of electronic quality monitoring and intelligent EHRs provides an answer. Together they form the basis for what he calls minimally invasive informatics, a way to extract the most value out of the information included in an EHR without requiring more input from the physician.

Interview by Brian Robinson.