New Brand Underscores Comprehensive Electronic Health Records

CHICAGO (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) December 2, 2008 -- The Health Story Project was announced today as the new brand name for the project formerly known as “Clinical Document Architecture for Common Document Types” (CDA4CDT). CDA4CDT will continue as the label for the technical standards developed by the project and submitted to Health Level Seven (HL7) for ballot. The new name -- Health Story -- expresses the belief that care givers and patients should have access to comprehensive electronic medical records that tell a complete health story. Renaming the initiative from the literal and technical name “CDA4CDT” speaks to the common vision underlying the group’s technical and marketing efforts.

Clinical Document Architecture for Common Document Types

Our group has been working with many partners in the industry to make comprehensive electronic health records a reality

Health Story is a strong brand that will speak to our efforts to move the industry forward by developing and encouraging the adoption of new implementation guides for comprehensive and efficient sharing of electronic clinical information.

this project has been a good partner with HL7, providing excellent input into our standard development process. We anticipate that their mission will continue to flourish and enrich the standards development community as the Health Story Project.

Health Story facilitates a gradual transition from unstructured narrative documentation toward the structured, discrete, and computer-interpretable electronic documentation necessary to support standardized electronic health records.

Reduced time and cost of searching for key data, and improved consistency of documentation are direct benefits of the Health Story strategy. The Health Story specifications will make narrative notes interoperable with the electronic health records moving the industry closer to its goal of improved data quality; ultimately improving quality of care and patient safety.

The Health Story vision of comprehensive, electronic medical records becomes achievable when guidelines that accelerate the adoption of accurate, shareable, and structured narrative documents are developed and embraced

This is the reason M*Modal founded this group and has been working diligently with our partners to move the effort forward.

“Our group has been working with many partners in the industry to make comprehensive electronic health records a reality,” said Liora Alschuler, project manager and co-founder of the project. “Health Story is a strong brand that will speak to our efforts to move the industry forward by developing and encouraging the adoption of new implementation guides for comprehensive and efficient sharing of electronic clinical information.”

The Health Story Project develops and promotes data standards that support the flow of information between narrative documents and electronic health records. The standards, once completed and adopted, will unlock critical information from narrative documents and enlarge and enrich the flow of this information into the electronic health record, speeding the development of interoperable clinical document repositories serving the enterprise and the emerging national and regional networks.

HL7 Chair Ed Hammond welcomes the rebranding stating that, “this project has been a good partner with HL7, providing excellent input into our standard development process. We anticipate that their mission will continue to flourish and enrich the standards development community as the Health Story Project.”

Today, approximately 600 million clinical documents are dictated in the United States each year, making up around 60% of all clinical information. While these documents contain the majority of physician-attested information and are used as the primary source of information for reimbursement and proof of service, this clinical information is grossly underutilized due to limitations in processing free-form narratives and data locked in narrative documents.

“Health Story facilitates a gradual transition from unstructured narrative documentation toward the structured, discrete, and computer-interpretable electronic documentation necessary to support standardized electronic health records.” said Harry B. Rhodes, MBA, RHIA, CHPS, CPHIMS, FAHIMA, AHIMA, Director of Practice Leadership. He continued “Reduced time and cost of searching for key data, and improved consistency of documentation are direct benefits of the Health Story strategy. The Health Story specifications will make narrative notes interoperable with the electronic health records moving the industry closer to its goal of improved data quality; ultimately improving quality of care and patient safety.”

“The Health Story vision of comprehensive, electronic medical records becomes achievable when guidelines that accelerate the adoption of accurate, shareable, and structured narrative documents are developed and embraced,” said Michael Finke, CEO, M*Modal. “This is the reason M*Modal founded this group and has been working diligently with our partners to move the effort forward.”

The Health Story Project, founded a little over two years ago, is a collaborative of healthcare vendors, providers and associations that holds an Associate Charter Agreement with Health Level Seven (HL7). This project develops HL7 Clinical Document Architecture Implementation Guides for common types of electronic healthcare documents, brings them through the HL7

ballot process and promotes their adoption within the industry. Over the previous two years, the initiative supported the development of four HL7 CDA Implementation Guides for standard electronic documents, including the Consultation Note, History and Physical, Operative Note and the recently-announced Diagnostic Imaging Report.

Under its new name, Health Story is launching a membership drive and five-year plan to ramp up development of implementation guides for additional types of clinical documents, conversion of the draft standards for trial use to normative specifications and promotion of their adoption within industry. Health Story will create a broad and diverse consortium that includes EHR vendors, associations and providers who share a common interest in making critical clinical information available to all participants in the healthcare process. Initial participation and support has come from a broad range of participants in the areas of natural language processing, document management and electronic health records.

Membership opportunities are available at the Promoter, Contributor and Participant levels with varying levels of membership fees and related benefits. Key benefits for Promoters includes the use of the logo and marketing materials and promotion on the consortium web site. http://www.healthstory.com/

Health Story Founders:

About M*Modal

M*Modal, based in Pittsburgh, PA, offers on-demand conversational documentation services that help healthcare providers capture discrete clinical information from dictation to generate complete and timely electronic medical records. The company's unique Speech Understanding technology platform, AnyModal CDS, is a vital tool that empowers physicians to capture clinical facts and orders from dictation without requiring any change to their normal dictation routine. M*Modal's focus is on providing hospitals, healthcare IT vendors, and medical transcription service providers with the industry's most comprehensive yet most adaptable solution for creating highly accurate, structured, encoded, and shareable medical documents to increase patient safety, promote continuity of patient care, and reduce cost. For more information on M*Modal, visit its Web site at: www.mmodal.com.

About AHIMA

AHIMA is the premier association of health information management (HIM) professionals. AHIMA's 53,000 members are dedicated to the effective management of the personal health information needed to maintain a quality national healthcare delivery system. Founded in 1928 to improve the quality of medical records, AHIMA is committed to advancing the HIM profession in an increasingly electronic and global environment through leadership in advocacy, education, certification, and lifelong learning. For more information about the Association, go to www.ahima.org

About AHDI

The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), formerly AAMT, has been the professional organization representing medical transcriptionists since 1978. AHDI sets standards of practice and education for medical transcriptionists, administers a dual credentialing program, has established a code of ethics, and advocates on behalf of the profession. There are nearly 100 component associations of AHDI, each of which holds regular educational meetings and symposia. For more information, visit www.ahdionline.org.

About MTIA

The not-for-profit Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) is the world’s largest trade association serving medical transcription service operators. Its mission is to create an environment in which medical transcription companies can prosper, grow, and deliver the highest level of healthcare documentation services. For more information, visit www.mtia.com. The two associations formed a strategic legal partnership in 2007 to pool critical resources and collaborate on key initiatives focused on optimizing healthcare delivery by providing timely, accurate and relevant clinical information.

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