Project HealthDesign Director Testifies at Meaningful Use Workgroup Hearing

Libby Dowdall, Communications Coordinator, Project HealthDesign National Program Office

Today, Patricia Flatley Brennan, R.N., Ph.D., Project HealthDesign national program director, and Nikolai Kirienko, co-project director for Project HealthDesign’s Chronology.MD team, will testify at a hearing on the incorporation of patient-generated information to manage health. This hearing is organized by the Meaningful Use Workgroup of the HIT Policy Committee.

Brennan has been invited to testify on the business and technology of patient-generated data and its use in clinical care. Her written testimony (pdf) draws upon the experiences of all fourteen Project HealthDesign teams throughout the program’s two rounds of funding, as well as the teams’ interactions with hundreds of patients. However, she will focus mainly on stories and findings from Project HealthDesign’s five current teams.

Brennan’s testimony will focus on three main points:

1. We need to expand the idea of patient-generated data to include patient-defined data.
2. Sharing patient-defined data with clinicians improves the business of health care.
3. Existing technologies are adequate but not optimal for the clinical integration of patient-defined and patient-generated data.

Kirienko will draw upon the experiences of Project HealthDesign’s Chronology.MD team; he will also speak as an advocate for patient engagement in health and health care. His testimony will focus on the need for patient access to open APIs in the EHR and the need for standards for dynamic patient engagement on mobile devices.

Paul Tang, M.D., Project HealthDesign National Advisory Committee chair, co-chairs the Meaningful Use Workgroup, and Deven McGraw, J.D., M.P.H., a member of Project HealthDesign’s regulatory and assurance advisory group, is also a member of the Workgroup.

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