The Rainbow Button Initiative
The Patients 2.0 meeting at the Health 2.0 Spring Fling has just concluded. I took some real time notes - here. One Initiative that I stepped up to is something that can tie together Patients 2.0, HealthCa.mp and the Health 2.0 Developer's Challenge. I can't take credit for the idea, or even the name. All I did was echo some ideas and connect a few dots.
The name is the Rainbow Button Initiative. (Thanks go to @SunnieSouthern for coining the name. I like it.)
First there was Blue Button
Let's give some background with credit to Entrepreneur in Residence at the Department of Health and Human Services, CTO, Todd Park (@ToddPark).
Todd was one of the people behind the Blue Button Initiative (see here for more background on this important initiative). This provides a simple button to enable patients to download their health information. In a world where it can be difficult for patients to get hold of their health data this is an important step forward that has been taken by the Federal Government. Indeed, since the Blue Button was launched in October 2010 over 200,000 people have downloaded their personal health data from places like the VA.
Last week I posted an article "#hcsd11 Blue Button,Portals and User Generated Health and meaningful use" encouraging us to push the Blues - The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - to step up and mandate their member health plans to implement the blue button for their members. This was my "Blue [Give Me My] Button" Campaign idea. We should spread this initiative to all major hospital and payer systems and encourage EHR/EMR developers to incorporate Blue Button functionality in to their products.
There are already teams at work in the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge creating solutions to make use of this Blue Button data. Prizes are being awarded by the Robert Wood Johnson and Markle Foundations.
Then there was the Green Button
At a recent round table looking at Patient Centric Health Care. Dave DeBronkhart (@epatientdave) mentioned the idea he and some Health Change Advocates had proposed of the Green Button. The purpose being to allow people to easily share their health data in anonomized form for research and other purposes. I mentioned this at the Patients 2.0 session and connected this with another initiative....
How About a White Button
The White Button builds on the concepts behind the Direct Project which is about creating "specifications for a secure, scalable, standards-based way to establish universal health addressing and transport for participants (including providers, laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies and patients) to send encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet. The Nationwide Health Information Networkis a set of standards, services and policies that enable secure health information exchange over the Internet. The project itself will not run health information exchange services. Several Federal agencies and healthcare organizations are already using NHIN standards to exchange information amongst themselves and their partners. The Direct Project will expand the standards and service descriptions available to address the key Stage 1 requirements for Meaningful Use, and provide an easy "on-ramp" for a wide set of providers and organizations looking to adopt. At the conclusion of this project, there will be one nationwide exchange, consisting of the organizations that have come together in a common policy framework to implement the standards and services. This project is open government, and as such, contains avenues for a broad range of public participation. See below for more information on participation."
The simple idea is to take the concept of the Direct Project and surface it for Patients as a White Button.
When you put these together you have the Rainbow Button Initiative as a simple concept for Patients to manage their Health Data.
Let's work on these ideas under the auspices of the HealthCamp Foundation. We can progress the ideas at upcoming HealthCamps and provide an update at HealthCampSFBay and Patients 2.0 in conjunction with the Health 2.0 Conference this coming September.
So check out the upcoming HealthCamps:
- HealthCa.mp/ct @Yale School of Nursing on 4/2/11
- HealthCa.mp/dc @Kaiser Permanente in Washington DC on 6/8/11
Who's in?
