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March, 2004
A Model for Remote Health Care in the Developing World: The Markle Foundation Telemedicine Clinic in Cambodia
Lygeia Ricciardi
The Markle Foundation established the Cambodian telemedicine clinic in partnership with several organizations that were previously making significant contributions to Cambodia's development: American Assistance for Cambodia, The Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, and Partners Telemedicine. The Markle clinic was designed to leverage and expand upon the existing efforts of these organizations. This paper is a summary of the Markle Foundation's work in supporting the development of the telemedicine clinic in Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia, and includes an overview of the project, a discussion of lessons learned and applied thus far, and suggestions for future work.
Project: The Markle Foundation Telemedicine Clinic in Cambodia

  Download Report (85K)

June 5, 2003
Connecting for Health...
Markle Foundation and collaborative participants
In June 2002, the Markle Foundation launched an ambitious public-private initiative designed to improve patient care by promoting the adoption of an initial set of standards for electronic medical information, in a way that protects patient privacy. This project, Connecting for Health...A Public-Private Collaborative, is bringing together government, industry, healthcare leaders and consumer advocates in an action-oriented nine-month effort to establish consensus on a core set of health care data standards. Such standards have the potential to improve quality, facilitate timely research, and ultimately enable patients to become full participants in their care. More information about the Connecting for Health program is available at http://www.connectingforhealth.org. In the coming months, Markle will be publishing reports and recommendations through the website.
Project: Connecting for Health

  Download The Steering Group Key Themes and Guiding Principles (340k)
  Download The Personal Health Working Group Final Report (486k)
  Download The Privacy and Security Working Group Report and Findings (481k)
  Download The Data Standards Working Group Report and Recommendations (876k)
  Download Appendix A - Clinical Data Exchange Efforts in the United States: An Overview (868k)
  Download Personal Health Working Group survey on consumer attitudes toward a Personal Health Record (1.2MB)
  Download Key Findings (22K)
  Download Facts and Stats (106K)

January 2003
Time Series Modeling for Syndromic Surveillance
Ben Y. Reis, Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston, Massachusetts, Kenneth D. Mandl, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Emergency department (ED) based syndromic surveillance systems identify abnormally high visit rates that may be an early signal of a bioterrorist attack. For example, an anthrax outbreak might first be detectable as an unusual increase in the number of patients reporting to the ED with respiratory symptoms. Reliably identifying these abnormal visit patterns requires a good understanding of the normal patterns of healthcare usage. Unfortunately, systematic methods for determining the expected number of (ED) visits on a particular day have not yet been well established. This paper presents a generalized methodology for developing models of expected ED visit rates.

  Download BioMed Central Report (260K)
View Online at BioMed Central

January 2003
It is about Health: Securing a National Health Information Infrastructure
Dr. Don E. Detmer, University of Virginia
Presented at the National Quality Forum/Institute of Medicine Forum in March 2002
Our times have presented us with a unique opportunity to create structures and standards for the future of health and health care. This paper identifies essential strategic and tactical issues that confront the United States as it faces the development of a National Health Information Infrastructure for health. It offers recommendations to form a platform for discussion and sets priorities to facilitate action.
Project: Connecting for Health

  Download BioMed Central Report (302K)
View Online at BioMed Central

October 2002
The Quality Case for Information Technology in Healthcare
Dr. David W Bates, Brigham & Women's Hospital
Published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making (2002, 2:7) Information and communications technology represents a major opportunity for improving health care quality, but health care organizations currently invest less in ICT than in any other information-intensive industry; not surprisingly current systems are relatively primitive, compared with industries such as banking or aviation. This report, supported by the Markle Foundation, discusses the current levels of ICT and quality in health care, how quality improvement and management are currently done, the evidence that more ICT might be helpful, a vision of the future, and the barriers to getting there. It suggests that there are five key policy domains that need to be addressed: standards, incentives, security and confidentiality, professional involvement, and research. Of these, it finds that financial incentives represent the single most important factor.
Project: Patient Accessible Electronic Medical Records

  Download BioMed Central Report (260K)
View Online at BioMed Central

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