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Selected Clients

California Healthcare Foundation

CHCFThe California HealthCare Foundation is an independent philanthropy committed to improving the way health care is delivered and financed in California, and helping consumers make informed health care and coverage decisions. Formed in 1996, its goal is to ensure that all Californians have access to affordable, quality health care. CHCF commissions research and analysis, publishes and disseminates information, convenes stakeholders, and funds development of programs and models aimed at improving the health care delivery and financing systems. One of the projects the Foundation has funded is the development of the Care Data Exchange software. This software system facilitates regional healthcare information sharing & the formation of Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs). The Foundation is considering maximizing the value of this resource by making it available as an open source offering. FutureSense Research is continuing to advise the Foundation with regard to the technical & architectural changes that would be necessary to CDE in order to do this, as well as the intellectual property issues involved in converting to open source. David Hartzband is currently working on the redesign of the CDE code & cooperating with the Foundation’s other advisors (including Forrester Research) in the formation of an open source development community for CDE.

One-e-App

One-e-AppI recently completed a technology evaluation for CHCF of software that they have spun-off into a separate non-profit organization named One-e-App. One-e-App is a Web-based system for connecting families with a range of publicly funded health and social service programs. This one-stop approach improves the efficiency and user-friendliness of the application process for families seeking health coverage. The One-e-App application is used by a number of counties in California to register applicants & determine eligibility for such programs as Adult & Child MediCal, CA Healthy Kids, etc. It is also used in Arizona for food stamp & state healthcare programs. The evaluation that I did focused on the current application’s architecture, implementation & development process. I made recommendations for migration of the application to a web services architecture & also for the reorganization of the development process & development organization. This project was completed in April, 2006.

EMC

EMCEMC is one of the world leaders in information storage & management. An ~$9B company with 23,000 employees, it emphasizes the value of information throughout its lifecycle. If this sounds like an advertisement, I (DJH) recently left EMC as Technology Vice President for Collaboration. I still think it’s a great company (just not a great company for me). One of the last major projects I worked on at eRoom/EMC was the integration of collaboration technology with project & process management. This is a particularly powerful combination that allows people to interact around projects that makes their planning & execution much more effective. As part of this work, I started a large project with EMC Information Technology to use eRoom as the project & process manager for all IT projects funded throughout the corporation. This project was only partially done when I left & the application required a redesign in order to simplify it & make it more usable. FutureSense Research was contracted by EMC to do this redesign (of the eRoom application) & to assist in the deployment of the software. This work was successfully completed in August 2005.

OBJECTHealth

OBJECTHealth is a management consulting group, located in San Francisco, CA but operating nationally, that helps healthcare organizations & communities adopt & implement health information technologies to improve the efficiency & effectiveness of community healthcare delivery. They have worked extensively to assist in the planning & implementation of healthcare information sharing initiatives, but their perspective is that technology is only one part of the overall effort to improve healthcare delivery. I am working with an OBJECTHealth team on a project for a New York based foundation that has a controlling interest in a software company that provides a practice management application for community healthcare clinics. This is a segment that is not currently served by technology & the client is motivated to make the practice management application available to community clinics at an appropriate price point & with very high quality. The project is an extensive technical & organizational review of the software company in order to make recommendations for the improvement of the quality & competitiveness of its product. I am in charge of the evaluation of current technology including architecture, implementation best practices & software development & quality processes, as well as making recommendations for their improvement.

 

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