This is a great interview and it’s 50 Minutes long and if you read Dr. Halamka’s blog he’s it in Health IT today. You can read his blog, Geek Doctor, here. This is nice as you get to hear what we normally read with no sound and it does make a difference as 
there’s some humor and common sense that comes across that you can’t get without sound. At the bottom you can watch the entire interview and I have taken a couple short clips here that relate to what’s being discussed and what’s happening in Health IT today. He does 600 consults a year, squeezes those in and is a mushroom expert as well.
Michael Krigsman runs his radio show CXOTalk every week from Boston and was able to catch up with Dr. Halamka. His history is very interesting to listen to as well. He wrote code in the 90s and talks about how different his job is today.
Here’s one really good section and everybody in IT will bless these comments as I have as myself and the question is asking about Healthcare.Gov and how it launched. If you are a non data person listen up here as you do not launch a project before it’s time. “Never go live based on a deadline, you go live when the product is ready”…and we will never forget Kathleen Sebelius as all folks in tech fully anticipated the condition of that launch…”there’s no problem that can’t be blamed on IT”….he continues on. That is true and I see it in the news every day and I used to get hit on the head over things people thought IT created when in fact there was more too it than just the machines going nuts.
Here’s another good clip worth listening to …”The Affordable Care Act”…and the pages and pages of regulations. ICD 10, this is great explanation:)
Interoperability…good discussion here and it’s different in Massachusetts as he says, and in California it’s not the same at all…a lot different and things don’t work like they do back there. The privacy issue is one to tune into here as he gives the case on how it works and how the law works in Massachusetts with patients giving permission and it’s doesn’t work that way in all states.
Those are a couple of the highlights and if you have time the entire interview is below and again it’s 50 minutes. At the end you get hear more about budgets, quality and how it works and then the farm, which with his schedule has to be be way to work off stress, shoveling manure as he says, much different than the CIO job where he’s at all day. He’s living in the “real world” with tech and virtual world values all being meshed together and working. BD
John D. Halamka, MD, MS is Chief Information Officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), CEO of MA-SHARE (the Regional Health Information Organization), Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), and a practicing Emergency Physician.
Dr. Halamka completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University where he received a degree in Medical Microbiology and a degree in Public Policy with a focus on technology issues. While at Stanford he served as research assistant to Dr. Edward Teller, Dr. Milton Friedman, and presidential candidate John B. Anderson. He authored three books on technology related issues and formed a software development firm, Ibis Research Labs, Inc. Additionally, he served as a columnist for Infoworld, technical editor of Computer Language Magazine and technology consultant to several startup companies.
http://www.cxo-talk.com/episodes/john-halamka-cio-harvard-medical-school
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