A national health care data network is overdue

Design of a national distributed health data network.

A distributed health data network is a system that allows secure remote analysis of separate data sets, each comprising a different medical organization's or health plan's records. Distributed health data networks are currently being planned that could cover millions of people, permitting studies of comparative clinical effectiveness, best practices, diffusion of medical technologies, and quali...

Monitoring Health Care Using National Administrative Data Collections

The ADVANCE network: accelerating data value across a national community health center network

The ADVANCE (Accelerating Data Value Across a National Community Health Center Network) clinical data research network (CDRN) is led by the OCHIN Community Health Information Network in partnership with Health Choice Network and Fenway Health. The ADVANCE CDRN will 'horizontally' integrate outpatient electronic health record data for over one million federally qualified health center patients, ...

Is Patient Choice the Future of Health Care Systems?

Patient and user choice are at the forefront of the debate on the future direction of health and public services provision in many industrialized countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is used both, as a means to achieve desired policy goals in public health care systems such as greater efficiency and improved quality of care, and as a good with its own intrinsic value. However, the evidence sug...

Early childhood development-global action is overdue.

In 2007, The Lancet declared that early childhood development was a global challenge of the greatest urgency. 4 years later, we have made progress, but still have far to go in making early childhood development the global priority it must be. The importance of early childhood development remains profound. As the accompanying papers in The Lancet show so clearly, the prenatal and postnatal perio...