The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to family history and genealogy. Indexing massive amounts of data provides FamilySearch.org the advantage when it comes to searching genealogical records online by name, date and location. Currently there are 2.4 million rolls of microfilm in their vault undergoing digital conversation, and that doesn't include new digital images that are being collected online.
ProQuest has entered into an expanded agreement with publisher Schattauer GmbH to add to the German-language resources discoverable through the Summon service.
Neil Stanley, regional president of corporate partnerships at Harrison College in Indiana, recently discussed in a podcast their comprehensive International Classification of Disease Tenth Revision (ICD-10) training curriculum. It is designed to equip physicians, coders and other medical staff with the tools necessary to make the transition to ICD-1o as smooth and successful as possible. The deadline for the transition is October 1, 2014 and there is much work left to do to be prepared.
The Digital Public Library of America launched a new website last week and become an independent nonprofit with the goal of pulling together vast resources for the public. A new platform will aggregate digital resources from libraries and museums across the United States. This library platform will not host any resources, but will provide open access to metadata about them. This information was found on Government Technology in their article, "Digital Public Library of America Opens Access to Resources."
With all that is going on in the world of healthcare, i.e. ICD-10 conversion, electronic medical records, and the new government healthcare program, it is hard to imagine adding to that load. However, sometimes what is an add-on can be a load reliever.
Indexing is important regardless of the content, type, volume or location. That was made even clearer to me when I found this article about a small county courthouse indexing their documents into digital archives for safety in lieu of disasters or identity fraud. Of course we are all for digitizing content for ease in findability as well, but when I realized this article, which I found on Google News, was about a small town just a few miles from my hometown. In fact, my sister lives in this particular town.
Many believe that one of the biggest challenges currently facing the health IT industry is the coding classification transition to ICD-10. Training staff, integrating data, and preparing for financial impact has consumed the healthcare professionals and will continue to do so until implementation in October 2014.
With the preparation for the transition to ICD-10, there is a new interest in population management. This most likely comes from the concerns around financial reimbursement after the implementation in October 2014. There will be five times the number of codes after the implementation of the ICD-10 coding classification. This will allow for greater specificity, but there will be a huge learning curve.
H.I.M. ON CALL has made available their dual coding services for hospitals migrating to ICD-10 coding classification system. Dual Coding is part of the process to end-to-end testing for ICD-10.
Organizations that help manage and analyze medical content have a unique opportunity during this time of ICD-10 transition. Healthcare entities are recognizing the need for sharing clinical data. This trend has been accelerated by the transition. This interesting information was found on Reuters in their article, “Wolters Kluwer Health to Acquire Health Language, Inc., a Leader in the Medical Terminology Management Market.”