FerrumIT Blog

A new report from Frost and Sullivan has some high hopes for VoIP and SIP services. The research firm has painted another rosy picture where IP communications rule. The firm sees VoIP and SIP Trunking services beating the market downturn and instead build on their previous growth.

According to the research firm’s ’North American VoIP Access and SIP Trunking Services Markets’ report, the market earned revenues of $717.3 million in 2009, but it could reach $3.9 billion in 2016. While most enterprise systems currently run on PBX with gateways, the firm believes the move to SIP would be inevitable as companies upgrade and deploy more complete unified communications (UC) solutions.

For more:
- read the TMC article

Desktop and mobile VoIP software maker, CounterPath, has released a new version of its Bria softphone. The Bria 3.1 is being billed as the perfect softphone for replacing deskphones and integrating with new unified communications (UC) upgrades.

The Bria 3.1 is a secure standards-based softphone that include HD 1280x720p video calls. The upgrade sees an improved user interface (UI) and organization structure to make features easier to access. The Bria has also expanded its interoperability with equipment from major vendors like Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, BroadSoft, Cisco, NEC and Nokia Siemens Networks as well as Asterisk-based telephony systems.

Another new feature coming to this latest upgrade is multiple account support. Users can now choose on the fly which account to use for voice, IM and HD calling.

For more:
- read the release

At this week’s Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington, D.C., a number of  VoIP vendors are showing off their new products that play nice with the Microsoft brand.

Polycom, for one, is offering a sneak peak of some of their IP phones and integration plans with the new Microsoft Communications Server “14.”

The Polycom CX series offers two new network-based IP desktop phones: the  CX500 and CX600 as well as the industry’s first and only IP conference phone designed for MCS “14″ the CX3000. The three phones will offer Polycom’s HD Voice to the server. The company will also demo more UC solutions like the CX700, the CX5000 Unified Conference Station and Polycom’s personal and room-based HD telepresence solutions.

For more:
- read the release

The FCC’s Local Telephone Competition report has announced some big news for the VoIP industry. IP communications is on the rise with 21 million end-users taking advantage of VoIP subscriptions from cable, traditional telcos or VoIP providers.

The report noted that there were 162 million wireline retail local telephone service connections as of the end of 2008. Of that figure, 141 million were traditional switched access lines while 21 million were VoIP subscribers. With numbers like that it seems VoIP still has a long way to go before it replaces all the telephones in the U.S., but with the FCC’s plans for the all-IP network, these numbers may be shifting more in the coming years.

For more:
- see the FCC release here
- read FierceTelecom’s take here

Hot on the heels of a Computer Sciences Corp. report telling private health insurers to get with the federal EMR and quality-reporting incentive program, the same consulting firm has issued a paper advising hospitals and doctors to start assessing whether their chosen systems will meet newly published rules governing EMR certification in the short term.

“Given that the process of certifying systems will start soon, providers should ask their vendors when they plan to apply for certification,” write Erica Drazen, managing partner of CSC’s Healthcare Group, and Jim D’Itri, a partner in the Falls Church, Va.-based company’s Healthcare Strategy and Operations Group. “Because meaningful use incentives require a currently certified system, and the requirements will increase in 2013, system purchases and implementation plans should consider current and expected future requirements,” they add.

“For example, bedside medication administration with bar code verification was not proposed as a Stage 1 requirement; however, it is almost certainly a future requirement for meaningful use incentives. Therefore, this capability should be included in any IT strategy or selection. Any vendor contracts should have provisions that include updates to meet future certification criteria as part of regular covered maintenance.”

Providers must use certified technology to earn Medicare and Medicaid bonus payments.

ONC two weeks ago issued final rules for a temporary program that will govern EMR certification through the end of 2011. Private entities, including the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, must apply to be authorized certification bodies based on ONC’s testing criteria. National health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal expects the first batch of certified EMRs to be ready by the fall.

For more:
- see this CSC “Update on Certification” issue brief (.pdf)
- take a look at this Healthcare IT News story

Many dates have been thrown around regarding when CMS plans to publish its final rule for meaningful use. This highly anticipated regulation, of course, will spell out how providers and organizations can become eligible for HITECH’s electronic health record incentive payments.

Some news outlets have reported that July 13 is the magic date. That sounds about right, give or take a few days. FierceEMR spoke with a CMS official directly involved in writing and publishing the final regulation, and she assures us that although there’s no “official” publication date (CMS missed its own self-imposed June 30 deadline), “I would be very surprised if it’s published any later than July 14.”

“We hoped to have it out by the end of June, but it’s looking more like mid-July,” the official told us this week. “There are so many moving parts and so many people are involved. This is a long regulation.” No doubt! The proposed rule was thicker than many novels. We expect nothing less from the final reg.

CMS also plans to unveil its plan for aligning its Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) with the EHR incentive program in mid-July. “We propose to include many ARRA core clinical quality measures in the PQRI program, to demonstrate meaningful use of EHR and quality of care furnished to individuals,” CMS states in an advanced copy of the proposed reg, CMIO magazine reports. “We propose the selection of these measures to meet the requirements of planning the integration of PQRI and EHR reporting.”

For more information:
- read this Government Health IT article
- read the CMIO article
- bookmark the Federal Register’s Table of Contents, where the final rule will appear

About 32 percent of healthcare organizations already use some form of cloud computing, and 73 percent report that they plan to move more applications to the cloud, according to a study from consulting firm Accenture.

While healthcare trails most other sectors of the economy in terms of IT adoption, those numbers are in line with what Accenture found in other industries. In manufacturing, 32 percent said they currently were using cloud-based applications, compared to 35 percent in retail and 29 percent in education. Similarly, 75 percent of survey respondents in the technology and government sectors have plans to make greater use of cloud computing in the future.

“Cloud computing is a newer technology and compared to existing IT is newer and more cost advantageous,” particularly for small physician practices, Accenture senior research analyst Dadong Wan says in an interview with InformationWeek. The cloud offers the kinds of “economies of scale” that customers can’t get with in-house servers, according to Wan.

The Accenture analyst also says that security with cloud computing actually is tighter than what typical healthcare organizations might find within their own walls because vendors can’t afford to have vulnerable systems. “Cloud players’ livelihood is protecting data,” Wan explains.

IDC backs up Accenture’s findings by reporting that cloud computing in general will grow by 27 percent a year, generating $55 billion in revenue by 2014, compared to $16 billion today. IDC sees 5 percent growth for on-site IT services in that same time frame.

To learn more:
- check out this InformationWeek story
- see this news brief from EDL Consulting

The health IT community should know by this fall if EHRs they have purchased or are considering purchasing are certified under the federal government’s new, temporary certification program, national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal said, according to Healthcare IT News. Blumenthal made the pronouncement on a conference call with reporters after unveiling the final rule for a short-term certification program last Friday.

Vendors may be cutting it close, though, since the Medicare and Medicaid bonuses for “meaningful use” of EHRs begin Oct. 1 for hospitals and Jan. 1 for physicians. However, providers will only have to demonstrate meaningful use for 90 consecutive days to earn full credit for the first year of the program, according to proposed rules. CMS is expected to finalize its regulations for meaningful use within the next week.

“Certification was part and parcel of the process of making incentives work, and making the electronic health system work,” Blumenthal said. “Certification provides a basic guarantee to the purchasers–mostly providers of care–that the electronic health record they purchase will be capable of meaningful use.”

The temporary program is intended to be “a bridge to the second, permanent certification,” Blumenthal said. The permanent process should be announced before the end of 2010, he said.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will begin accepting applications July 1 for entities wishing to be authorized testing and certification bodies. The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology announced its intention to apply, and the Austin, Texas-based Drummond Group also has expressed an interest in starting an EHR certification program.

For more:
- have a look at this Healthcare IT News story

The wait is over! Those of you who haven’t been able to get a Google Voice account are in luck. Google has opened the gates and now the web-based Google Voice communications management platform is open to the public.

Google Voice offers a single phone number that can ring on all of a user’s phones, voice mail that can be sent to email as sound or text as well as the ability to listen in to a caller’s voice message while they are leaving it. The public release has some businesses excited to use the features, although at the moment it would mean adopting new Google Voice phone numbers.

The services was previously invite only like many of Google’s test products. With its resent purchase of Gizmo5, we can only hope more VoIP-style features will be added as membership to the service grows.

For more:
- read Google’s Voice blog
- see this Google Voice video intro to get started
- read about the business promise of the software

When HHS finalizes its Stage 1 rules for meaningful use of EMRs, likely in the next two weeks, don’t be surprised if the criteria aren’t all that different from those proposed at the end of 2009.

In a post on the ONC’s Health IT Buzz blog, national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal seems to reject the argument from many camps that the proposed standards are too difficult to attain, instead siding with those who believe that EMRs are a centerpiece of true health reform. “The question healthcare providers are facing today is whether we are pushing too hard, too fast to make this important change. I respectfully submit, no. In turn, I ask, ‘Can we make these changes expeditiously enough?’” Blumenthal writes.

“This is the time to realize the promise of health IT. Information technology has improved every aspect of our lives, we need to channel information technology to improve our health and care. Providing patients with improved quality and safety, more efficient care and better outcomes is paramount,” Blumenthal says, though he doesn’t tip his hand on specific points that might be in the final rule.

Blumenthal recalls his days of practicing internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, noting that he resisted switching to an EMR himself. “Over time, however, I found that working with health IT made me a better and safer physician. Most importantly, my patients received better, safer care and improved outcomes,” he says. It’s time, according to Blumenthal, for all Americans to get better care delivered at lower cost.

He recommends the Regional Extension Center program for providers who might otherwise feel lost on their journey toward meaningful use.

For more information:
- read Blumenthal’s blog post
- see this Health Data Management story