Medical Informatician Speaks on Meaningful Use for Philippine Health IT

December 15, 2011 3:33 pm | by Aliyah Lou Evangelista | Posted in News

Manila, Philippines-Dr. Cupid Gascon, Medical Informaticist in the United States and UP College of Medicine alumni, shared his thoughts on Meaningful Use as the country’s direction towards adopting health information technology.

“The targeted approach is the most effective approach in communication,” says Dr. Gascon explaining that a technology’s benefit should not be the highlight when it is introduced to users. “It should about speaking from users’ needs,” he added.

Dr. Gascon is coming from his experience on Meaningful Use in electronic health records (EHRs). Meaningful use is a part of the HITECH Act of 2009 (Health Information and Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Health) where EHRs/EMRs should pass standards on data coding, prescribing, information exchange and usefulness of the system to the health facility where it is installed. In turn, social financing programs of the US Department of Health and Human Services Health give incentive payments to EHR compliant health facilities.

“Word of mouth has been the most effective way of persuasion but if the word of mouth is not available, bring that word of mouth,” he puts in, saying that health professionals accept new technologies when the person explaining the technology to them are of the same as theirs.

Upon instigation of HITECH Act in 2009, US President Barack Obama allocated over $19 billion, including $2 billion in discretionary funds as incentive.

At the end of Dr. Gascon’s talk, he encourage the crowd to take lead in putting standards for health care implementation by influencing policy makers to delve on Meaningful Use EHR complaint systems.