Tuesday
January 31, 2006

Information technology & electronic communications
in all aspects of the profession

Welcome to the AVINews Monthly. We'd love your feedback on our ongoing efforts to improve the newsletter and its format, so email us your comments: martinmkm@mminformatics.com


In This Issue:
Executive Board
President's Comments
Official Standards

Call for Talbot Speakers
In the News
Jobs
Membership Renewal Form


Executive Board

Your officers for 2005-2006 are:

President - Dr. Michael K. Martin
President-elect - Dr. Stanley Robertson
Secretary/Treasurer - Dr. Dennis Ballance
Past President - Dr. Stephen Pittenger


Feedback

Please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments about AVI.


President's Comments

The deadline for submission of paper topics for the 2007 Talbot is here. If you have not already submitted your topics, please do so immediately. We need to comply with AVMA's submission schedule so that they will continue to support our ability to coordinate our own speakers and make the Talbot all that we want it to be. I know that the summer of 2007 seems a long way off, especially in computer technology time but use your imagination and think about what the work you are doing now may look like by then and give us a general proposal for your topics. The notes won't be due until spring 2007, and by then you'll have a more precise idea of where the work will be. I hope to see you, and hear you speak, in Washington.

Veterinary Informatics is a diverse field. Our members range from practitioners who want to learn a little more about how to effectively use computers in their practices all the way to full-time academic informaticists. We try to keep the content of this newsletter as varied as our membership. We want it to be an enjoyable read, once a month. This month is a little different. This is reading you need to do. Many of us don't find time to read the Federal Register cover-to-cover every day. So, in case you were too busy with Christmas plans to catch the December 23, 2005 issue, we have reproduced two pages here. This is an important announcement that makes the informatics standards we have been preaching at AVI official U.S. government policy. Healthcare standards are important. And now they are required--at least for government work.

Dr. Michael K. Martin


Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) Initiative;
Health Care and Vocabulary Standards for Use in Federal Health Information Technology Systems

[Federal Register: December 23, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 246)]
[Notices]               
[Page 76287-76288]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr23de05-78]                         

=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Office of the Secretary

[CMS-0015-N]
RIN 0938-ZA62

 
Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) Initiative; Health Care and 
Vocabulary Standards for Use in Federal Health Information Technology 
Systems

AGENCY: Office of the Secretary (OS), HHS.

ACTION: Notice.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: This notice identifies the 20 messaging and vocabulary 
standards adopted for use in Federal government health information 
technology systems. The first set of 5 standards was adopted on March 
21, 2003. The second set of 15 standards was adopted on May 6, 2004, 
thus completing the initial portfolio of

[[Page 76288]]

the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Cheryl Ford, (410) 786-7415.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Background

    The Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative began in 
October 2001 as one of 24 E-Government initiatives included in the 
President's Management Agenda (PMA). The CHI initiative is a 
collaborative effort to adopt Federal government-wide health 
information interoperability standards to be implemented by Federal 
agencies in order to enable the Federal government to exchange 
electronic health information.
    On May 6, 2004, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human 
Services (HHS) announced the adoption by HHS, the Department of 
Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Office of Management 
and Budget, and other participating Federal partners of 15 healthcare 
messaging and vocabulary standards recommended by the CHI initiative 
(http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2004pres/20040506.html). The adoption of 
these standards supplemented the first 5 standards adopted on March 21, 
2003 (http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2003pres/20030321a.html), thereby 
completing the initial CHI portfolio.
    The portfolio of 20 adopted standards will be used by all Federal 
agencies in implementing new, and to the extent possible, in modifying 
existing health information technology systems, as well as related 
business processes.

II. CHI Adopted Standards

    As a result of work completed in furtherance of CHI, the 20 
clinical standards that have been adopted for use by all Federal 
agencies as they develop and implement new information technology 
systems are as follows:

    1. Laboratory Results Names. Standard: Logical Observation 
Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC®).
    2. Messaging Standards. Includes: Scheduling, medical record/image 
management, patient administration, observation reporting, financial 
management, public health notification, and patient care. Standard: 
Health Level Seven® (HL7®) Version 2.3 and greater.
    3. Messaging Standards. Includes: Retail pharmacy transactions. 
Standard: National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) 
SCRIPT®.
    4. Messaging Standards. Includes: Device-device connectivity. 
Standard: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 
TM 1073.
    5. Messaging Standards. Includes: Image information to 
workstations. Standard: Digital Imaging and Communications in 
Medicine® (DICOM®).
    6. Demographics. Standard: HL7® Version 2.4 and greater.
    7. Lab Result Contents. Standard: Systematized Nomenclature of 
Medicine Clinical Terms® (SNOMED CT®).
    8. Units of Measure. Standard: HL7® Version 2.X+.
    9. Immunizations. Standard: HL7® Version 2.3.1, specifically 
the Vaccines Administered (CVX) and Manufacturers of Vaccines (MVX) 
external code sets maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention's (CDC) National Immunization Program (NIP).
    10. Medications. Standards: Federal Drug Terminologies: (Sub-
domain: Standard Adopted):
     Active Ingredient: FDA Established Names & Unique 
Ingredient Identifier (UNII) codes.
     Manufactured Dosage Form: FDA/CDER Data Standards Manual.
     Drug Product: FDA's National Drug Codes (NDC).
     Medication Package: FDA Standards Manual.
     Label Section Headers: LOINC® Clinical Structured 
Product Labeling (SPL).
     Special Populations: HL7 Version 2.4 and greater.
     Drug Classifications: The Department of Veterans Affairs' 
National Drug File Reference Terminology (NDF-RT) for mechanism of 
action and physiologic effect.
     Clinical Drug: the National Library of Medicine's RxNorm.
    11. Interventions/Procedures (Part A): Lab Test Order Names. 
Standard: LOINC®.
    12. Interventions/Procedures (Part B): Non-laboratory. Standard: 
SNOMED CT®.
    13. Anatomy. Standards: SNOMED CT® and the National Cancer 
Institute's (NCI) Thesaurus.
    14. Diagnosis/Problem Lists. Standard: SNOMED CT®.
    15. Nursing. Standard: SNOMED CT®.
    16. Financial/Payment. Standard: HIPAA Transactions and Code Sets.
    17. Genes. Standard: Human Genome Nomenclature.
    18. Clinical Encounters. Standard: HL7® Version 2.4 and greater.
    19. Text-Based Reports. Standards: HL7® and Clinical 
Document Architecture (CDA) Version 1.0-2000 Chemicals.
    20. Chemicals. Standard: Environmental Protection Agency's 
Substance Registry System.

    Specific details of these CHI standards can be obtained from the 
domain-specific full reports available for download at: http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/chi.html.

III. Collection of Information Requirements

    This notice does not impose information collection and 
recordkeeping requirements regulated by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995; that is, it does not require obtaining facts or opinions or 
answers to questions by or for a Federal agency. Consequently, it need 
not be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget under 44 U.S.C. 
35.

IV. Impact Statement

    We have chosen to explain the impact we foresee this notice having 
on the public as follows: There are indirect impacts for Federal 
contractors or potential contractors who may be involved in health 
information technology design, development, or evaluation. The Federal 
government will require all future health information technology system 
acquisitions to be based on CHI standards when applicable, whether 
system development occurs within the Agency or through the use of 
contractor services.

    Authority: The E-Government Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107-347) (H.R. 
2458)

    Dated: September 13, 2005.
Mark B. McClellan,
Administrator, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
    Approved: August 25, 2005.
Michael O. Leavitt,
Secretary.
[FR Doc. 05-24289 Filed 12-22-05; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 4120-01-P

A PDF formatted copy is available at: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/pdf/05-24289.pdf


Talbot 2007 Call For Papers

The Official Call for Papers for the 2007 Talbot Symposium is available. The deadline for submission is February 2, 2006.

The response to last year's call for papers was outstanding. We hope to repeat that success for 2007. There will again be 8 tracks of information available to us for programming (Sun-Wed, AM & PM) and we have assigned broad topics to those sessions. Of course, if you have a submission that is definitely worthy, yet doesn't fit neatly into the broad topics, we will still consider it!

Last year the submission process moved to the web to make it easier to collect the submissions. This year, we have an on-line web form that goes through an advertising supported form emailer. If you'd rather, the forms are on the web, and you can fill them in (Word, Open Document, or Text) and email them directly to me. The forms are posted at: http://www.avinformatics.org/symposia/symposia.htm. I'll try to send you a confirmation email that I have received your entry within 72 hours of submission. Dr. Robertson and I will begin to review the submissions and coordinate with our AVMA section chief regarding the 2007 Talbot Symposium near the end of February. The schedule will be finalized by AVMA and announcements back to speakers by sometime in the fall.


In the News

USDA Considering New Animal ID Approach, Costs Remain Industry Concern

The days are numbered when you can still expect to develop a critical mass of either technical or political support in one "place" to run national programs as large as the animal tracking part of NAIS. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes about the world being flat. What he means is that technology now lets companies send their work in pieces to whomever can best do each piece whether that is in Ames IA or Bangalore India. Besides the network infrastructure which we inherited from the Internet bubble, the important piece is the informatics knowledge to build the information and messaging standards to tie everything together. From the article below, it looks like USDA may be rethinking trying to build one monolithic animal tracking system and instead looking to "hook up" a bunch of specialized systems. To do this right, they are going to need an informaticist or two.

The Agriculture Department is considering a new approach for a national animal identification system that would allow the department to link to a network of private and state-operated animal tracking databases, Dr. John Clifford, USDA’s chief veterinarian, said at an American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting conference. The system would allow USDA to tap into a portal of various animal identification and tracking systems run by commodity groups or other organizations, as well as into 20 existing state databases.
American Farm Bureau
January 8, 2006

http://www.fb.org/news/nr/nr2006/nr0108m.html

The National Library of Medicine has issued a Request for Information regarding the major informatics research challenges

This Request for Information is addressed to all with interest in the application of computation to biomedical research, healthcare, and the education of health professionals (biomedical informatics, bioinformatics and computational biology.)

Information Requested

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) intends to issue a call for proposals that address a highly selective set of informatics problems of fundamental importance to biomedicine. To inform planning for such a program NLM solicits responses from the informatics, computer science, information science and engineering communities to the question:

What are the major informatics research challenges in biomedicine today?

All biomedical domains that can benefit from informatics, including those relevant to health care delivery, clinical research, basic biological research, public health and health education are included in this RFI. NLM is particularly interested in research challenges that are:

  • Significant to scientific discovery and health outcomes

  • Difficult, but approachable

  • Relatively unexplored or untested

  • Framed at a useful level of abstraction

http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-LM-06-001.html

Call for Papers - Journal of Biomedical Informatics (Special Issue on Public Health Informatics)

As Dr. Case and Dr. Martin attend HL7 working group meetings we are becoming increasingly aware of how much overlap exists between Veterinary Informatics and Public Health Informatics. Any members with publishable material seeking a publication ought to consider Public Health Informatics journals or special editions like this one.

Guest Editors: Rita Kukafka, DrPH, MA and William Yasnoff, MD, PhD
Submission deadline: March 29, 2006

The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics (JBI) is to consolidate a body of literature that focuses on the opportunities and challenges of applying novel informatics methods to public health practice and research. In accordance with the editorial policies of JBI, we are especially interested in exploring methods that have been developed in response to public health needs rather than focusing on public health applications of established techniques (see editorial guidelines at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/yjbin).

Manuscripts should be submitted to the JBI authors’ gateway (http://ees.elsevier.com/jbi/) no later than March 29th. Please be sure that your paper follows the JBI instructions for authors available on that web site. We would welcome advance notice of your intention to submit a paper; simply send an email message to kukafka@dbmi.columbia.edu. Any questions regarding the special issue may be sent to the same address. Submissions will undergo standard peer review, and opportunities for revision will be provided as appropriate. Papers judged inappropriate for the special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue of JBI.

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/yjbin

 


Jobs and Training

 


About AVI

Joining the AVI
You may renew or apply for membership in the AVI by completing an application and paying the annual dues. An application is also included in each issue of the AVI Newsletter. Membership is for a full year, expiring July 31 each year. You may select from several membership categories, work groups, and newsletter formats as described in the application. All member categories share the privileges of the newsletter and the communication services of the society. Full and corporate members have voting privileges. If you share AVI's interests, please join us.

Mission
The AVI, formerly the American Veterinary Computer Society, was formed to expand the use of the computer as a tool in veterinary medicine. This includes serving as an educational resource, promoting the use of information technology and electronic communications, and developing and promoting standards in veterinary information management.

Benefits
Membership benefits include the monthly AVI newsletter, participation in work groups, the AVI-L listserv discussion list, and an annual membership directory.

Levels
Membership incorporates a range of levels to encourage participation from all segments of the profession, veterinarians and non-veterinarians, as well as its supporting organizations. This includes veterinary practitioners and their staff, faculty and staff of veterinary?colleges, diagnostic laboratories, medical records personnel, medical librarians, students, software and hardware developers, and corporations supplying veterinary products and services. Over one third of the members are individuals working in the field of clinical veterinary medicine, one third are in academia, and the remainder are in industry, government, and other veterinary medicine. Membership is international, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States.

Meeting
The annual membership meeting is held in conjunction with the AVMA Annual Convention and includes the one-day Richard B. Talbot Symposium on Veterinary Informatics and two days of general information on computer usage. The members of the Association are encouraged to write articles and/or make presentations regarding their experiences, as these are valuable to establish veterinary informatics as a legitimate discipline and to encourage individuals in the veterinary community to become more involved in the information age.

Application
Membership Application (HTML)
Membership Application (RTF)


Date:  _________________

Association for Veterinary Informatics Application and Renewal Form

O  New      O  Renewal of AVI membership # ______
Please circle change in address or other information.

Name:  _________          ___  ____________________          Dr.   
                 First                        M.I.  Last                                   
       Mr./Ms.

Organization:
___________________________

Address:  ________________________________________________

Phone:  (_____) _____________

________________________________________________________

Fax:      (_____) _____________

______________________   ____     __________            ________
City                                               State             Zip/PC                     Country

E-mail:_______________________

Membership Level

     Level

Description

Dues

Rights

O  Full

Individuals interested in the field of veterinary informatics

$35.00

Receipt of newsletter; participation in Work Groups; full voting rights; eligible for membership on standing committees.

O  Associate

Individuals who support the mission and goals of the Society

$20.00

Receipt of newsletter; participation in Work Groups; no voting rights; not eligible for membership on standing committees.  Limited to two years. 

O  Corporate

Corporations that support the goals of the Association

$100.00

Receipt of newsletter; participation in Work Groups; full voting rights (one per corporation); not eligible for membership on standing committees.

O  Student

Students enrolled in any academic program interested in the field of veterinary informatics

$10.00

Receipt of newsletter; participation in Work Groups; no voting rights; not eligible for membership on standing committees.

Newsletter format desired:  O  Hardcopy  O  Electronic (E-mail address required):_________________  O Both

Membership includes participation in one Work Group.  Please select one group from the list below.

O  Practice Management Systems

O  Data and Messaging Standards

O  Communications and Networking

O  Computer-Aided Instruction/Computer Assisted Learning

O  Computerized Patient Records

Primary work or occupation:  (Please note new categories.)

O  Small animal practice

O  Academic- Clinical, Education, R & D

O  Industry, Government

O  Mixed practice

O  Academic, Other, Diagnostic

O  Ophthalmology

O  Large animal practice

O  Other ____________________________

O  Student

Current interest or involvement in veterinary computing:

O  Basic computer usage in practice
O  Advanced computer usage in practice
O  Internet Usage                       
O  Tertiary Center Medical Records

O  Cutting edge computer technology
O  Education; undergraduate, continuing, or staff
O  Other ______________________________

What topics would you like to see in the newsletter or at the AVMA meeting?  Other comments?

Dues are payable by August 1.  Membership is from August 1 to July 31the following year.  Dues must be received by September 1 of each year in order to be listed in the directory.

Make check payable to:   Association for Veterinary Informatics

Mail dues and form to:      
Dr. Dennis Ballance, Secretary/Treasurer, AVI                       
VMTH Computer Services
1 Shields Ave
Davis, CA 95616  
E-mail:  dwballance@ucdavis.edu


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Copyright 2005, Association for Veterinary Informatics