Sunshine Act CMS Open Payments Mobile App for Physicians

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is providing a free mobile app to help physicians keep track of, store, and view financial payments and other transfers of value from applicable manufacturers of covered drugs, devices, biologicals, or medical supplies to physicians, as defined by the Physician Payment Sunshine Act and its implementing regulations.

Learn more here.

HHS Text4Health Projects #mHealth

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has a number of "Text4Health" projects that are health text messaging programs. Some of those programs include:

Text4Baby: a public-private partnership that provides pregnant women and new mothers with free health text messages.

TXT4Tots: The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is collaborating with the American Academy of Pediatrics to develop a text message library on nutrition and physical activity, based on the Bright Futures Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents.

SmokeFreeTXT: The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Tobacco Control Research Branch (TCRB) has designed SmokeFreeTXT as a free mobile smoking cessation service designed for teens and young adults across the United States.

QuitNowTXT: The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Tobacco Control Research Branch (TCRB) has developed an interactive text messaging library and delivery algorithm for adults in the United States who wish to quit smoking.

SmokeFreeMoms: SmokeFreeMoms is a cross-HHS coordinated pilot project focused on providing pregnant women who wish to quit smoking with personalized, interactive and evidence-based health text messages.

Health Alerts On-the-Go: CDC's health information is now available on your mobile device.

Learn more about these Text4Health programs here.

A mobile app to treat PTSD

The Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) announced the release of a mobile application for use with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment. The app is called PE Coach.

PE Coach is the first mobile app designed to support the tasks associated with prolonged exposure treatment for PTSD. Providing hip-pocket access to the necessary tools for successful PE participation, the app includes audio recording capability for easy playback after sessions; tools to support patient tasks between sessions; and visual displays of symptom reduction over time. In addition, PE Coach is integrated with smartphone calendar functionality to encourage patient recall and session attendance.

PE Coach will help providers and patients overcome certain barriers to PE implementation, dissemination, and adherence.

Learn more about PE Coach here.

Videos from the Mobile Devices Roundtable are now available

Did you miss last week’s Mobile Devices Roundtable event? Did you attend the event and want to share the experience will colleagues? Do you know a health care provider or health IT professional who may find the discussions useful?

Event videos and materials from the Friday, March 16, 2012, Mobile Devices Roundtable are now available online.

Background: One of the key goals of the Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan is to inspire confidence and trust in health IT and electronic health information exchange by protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of health information. ONC’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer (OCPO), along with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), recently launched a privacy and security mobile device project. The project builds on the existing HHS HIPAA Security Rule - Remote Use Guidance and is designed to identify privacy and security good practices for mobile devices. The identified provider use case scenarios and good practices to address those scenarios will be communicated in plain, practical, and easy to understand language for use by health care providers, professionals, and other entities.

ONC & Surgeon General's Healthy App Challenge

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has partnered with the Office of the Surgeon General to launch the Surgeon General’s Healthy App Challenge.

The Challenge invites developers to submit health, wellness, and fitness apps with that focus on:

· Fitness/physical activity: applications aimed at recruiting and retaining people who are not regularly exercising
· Nutrition/health eating: applications aimed at quickly prepared home meals, eating out sensibly, and getting health food when traveling
· Integrative health: applications aimed at integrating multiple aspects of wellness (sleep habits, social health and mental health)

The challenge is designed to encourage the development and submission of technology applications to create a healthy and fit nation.

Interested developers should register at the Challenge.gov portal: http://sghealthyapps.challenge.gov/.

Registration is free and can be completed anytime during the Application Submission Period, December 6, 2011, to December 30, 2011.