HLN Learnings  Newsletter
HLN and ONC's TEFCA
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) selected Dr. Noam Arzt , President of HLN Consulting (HLN), as a member of the  Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force . This group of healthcare and health information technology specialists will advise ONC on various aspects of the Draft Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) . This framework outlines a common set of principles for trusted exchange of health information records and minimum terms and conditions for trusted exchange as directed by Congress in the 21st Century Cures Act.

Dr. Arzt recently submitted  public comments  related to TEFCA on behalf of HLN, and participated in the responses developed and submitted by key organizations including the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA), American Medical Informatics Associations (AMIA), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the Joint Public Health Informatics Task Force (JPHIT).
A new release (v 1.11.1) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) is now available ( download ICE now! ). ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support (CDS) for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems. The release includes support for  Earliest Date and Overdue Date . The Earliest Date is the soonest date that the vaccine can be given and still be considered valid. The Overdue Date is the date after which an immunization administered would be considered late. In this release, ICE returns the earliest and overdue dates for four vaccine groups:  Meningococcal ACWY Polio Rotavirus  and  Varicella . The ICE team expects the remaining vaccine groups will be completely supported in future releases of ICE in Spring 2018.
HLN Convenes National Advisory Board for its Open Source ICE Immunization Forecasting Software - see details
HLN Participates in HIMSS18 Interoperability Showcase
During the week of March 5 HLN participated along with other public health colleagues in the HIMSS18  Interoperability Showcase  which features real-life demonstrations of health information interoperability. The  Public Health Reporting  use case included HLN’s Open Source Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System ( RCKMS ) which is being deployed nationally in conjunction with CDC,the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). RCKMS provides the clinical decision support component for  electronic case reporting , allowing an EHR system to send clinical information to a centralized web service and receive a response indicating whether the patient’s clinical data needs to be reported to public health, and if so to which agencies and through what mechanism.

In addition, HLN’s  ICE  Open Source Immunization Forecasting Software was included within two products demonstrated by eClinicalWorks and DSS in the  Immunization and Vaccination  use case. HLN is a  Gold Corporate Member  of HIMSS.
HLN organized and participated in a national webinar titled  CDS for Immunizations (CDSi) : A Community and Standards-based Approach  on January 18, 2018. Over 50 individuals participated in the webinar which was sponsored by the  Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Learning Network  (PCORCDS).