Fwd: Comments on most recent slides

[nhindirect administration]

Please see the comments below.

Best,

The NHIN Direct Team

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Noam H Arzt, PhD <ar...@hln.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:36 PM
Subject: Comments on most recent slides
To: documentation...@googlegroups.com


Folks,

I see that new slides were posted. I have some comments. I'm sorry if they are duplicative of comments on previous drafts:

Vendor Messaging:

* These slides are very dense with text, no diagrams. Is that what we want?
* Slide 1:
 - "Active participation of over 200 State HIEs, IDNs, national networks, medical associations and vendors": This refers to the NHIN Direct *project*, not use of NHIN Direct *products*. We don't want to be misleading here...
* Slide 2:
 - "Driven and supported by ONC, therefore guaranteeing compliance to NHIN standards": Well, the title here is about what makes Direct *unique*. Exchange is also driven by ONC, so this is not so unique to Direct. Also, a nit: "compliance WITH standards."
 - "A recipe book of Internet standards, services and policies": Again, not unique...

Direct Overview:

* Slide 3: "Scalable. Enables Internet scale with no need for central network authority" - Well, this might be a little misleading. Even DNS is in some ways a "central network authority". It is certainly hierarchical, though redundant, but is central from the end users standpoint. And HISP services may also "feel" central from the user's standpoint.

* Slide 4/5 (2 versions of the same thing?): We continue to leave Disease Surveillance out of the public health list on the right. MU lists Disease Surveillance as one of 3 public health items. I know it's for EPs and not EH's, but, frankly, this is an error (I'm working with CMS on this). Providers do Disease Surveillance and by and large NOT Syndromic Surveillance but somehow these got flipped in the IFR and even the FR.

* Slide 6: This does not speak to me at all. I suggest removing it. Or focus on the core principles on the right and remove the diagram.

* Slide 7: This is fine, but the piece in the foreground is the piece least likely to be understood/appreciated by the reader (a little technical).

* Slide 8: All true about Open Source, but, again, does not speak to me and I don't understand the need to *prove* this point - the examples are a bit esoteric for most readers. Besides, NHIN Direct is NOT an Open Source product, at least not yet, right? It is being managed by ONC, not the Open Source community.

* Slide 10 (lines of code): Will become dated quickly. Not sure what it really helps me understand other than that some people are working hard. But to the average non-techie, is 10,000 lines of code a lot? A little?

* Slide 12 (pilots): This slide is VERY deceptive. Yes, these pilot sites COULD work together "across the country" but they AREN'T. The pilots as best as I can tell are all occurring *within* their communities (which is where they belong) and not *between* pilot sites as this map implies.

Thanks,

Noam

-----
Dr. Noam H. Arzt                               858/538-2220 (voice)
President, HLN Consulting, LLC                 858/538-2209 (FAX)
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