MBL/NLM MI Day 3: All I never asked for when pigs flew

I began the day over breakfast with Dr. Ed Hammond (current Chair of Health Level 7 (HL7), his wife, and Dr. Clem McDonald (Director of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications -LHNCBC).

Ed teaches online in Second Life, something I haven't explored much yet since my workplace doesn't have an instruction space there, and I enjoyed his perspective of believing online modalities are becoming the way to go for education since he himself has been teaching for decades. Unfortunately Clem came to the table just as I was leaving so we weren't able to talk for very long, but I enjoyed meeting him and gave him my leftover syrup for his French toast.



Ed spared no punches with his presentation about clinical information systems and immediately following this slide he had another where he engaged us in a discussion about the following questions related to the recent projected stimulus funds of $36.5 billion to create a national network of electronic health records (EHRs)

• Can health information technology (HIT) improve health and health care?
• Can HIT save $77.8b each year through universal use of HIT?
• What enables this dream?
• What is meaningful use of EHR?

We weren't able to get through all the presentation but the class discussion was invaluable due to the multiple perspectives we all brought to the table & I look forward to much reflection later.



Clem's presentation isn't online yet and I will link to it when it is, but I had to smile during the detailed explanation of the components of HL7 as part of it. Over 10 years ago I worked for the information technology department of UW Medicine in fiscal administration, and one of the management involved in clinical computing systems had a button on his office nameplate that said 'Ask me about HL7'

I never did but I received an answer anyway all these years later!

I'm having trouble with downloading the audio from video on my cell phone so I won't spoil the surprise with too much detail. My future students will never forget what Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) is thanks to Clem's enthusiastic tossing of stuffed pink pigs at us.



Kathi Canese from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) had the unenviable job of presenting after our shortened lunch and before we let out early for the day to catch the ferry to Martha's Vineyard and did a fantastic job with her presentation!

I'm purposely not linking to or discussing it here as this is deserving of a separate post during the Medlibs Round next week about PubMed since there is more news to share. Please submit your own blog entries in here!



I ended up doing none of what I had planned on at Martha's Vineyard and had a fantastic time!