Harry Sleeper is the Department Head of the Open Health Services group at MITRE Corporation. MITRE is a non-profit corporation which describes its mission as “One public interest company, working with industry and academia to advance and apply science, technology, systems engineering, and strategy, enabling government and the private sector to make better decisions and implement solutions to complex challenges of national and global significance.”
Harry had read Health Attitude and reached out to invite me to speak to his group. I made it up to Bedford, Massachusetts with 70 miles to spare on the Tesla Model S. I gave a talk about what I learned from the research for my book. I discussed what I view as the key problems in healthcare: cost, quality, and equity. The solutions I described fall in three categories: attitude, technology, and policy. All of these are described in detail in my various postings and in Health Attitude.
Harry and his team briefed me on some of the projects they are working on. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has an alliance with MITRE to promote higher quality care and better public health outcomes at manageable costs. One of the projects I learned about is the Standard Health Record (SHR). The initiative is focused on creating a single, high-quality health record for every individual in the United States. The tenet behind the SHR is to allow a single source of patient health information containing the complete patient health data needed for patient identification, emergency care, and primary care. The SHR concept is a solid one, but with many complexities and challenges to get it implemented. It will likely take at least a few years, but MITRE has very bright and innovative people working on it. I view the SHR as a “moonshot” for electronic health records, and I plan to follow the progress.
On my way home, I stopped at a shopping center in Auburn, Massachusetts which had eight Tesla Superchargers. I charged the car to 200 miles in less than an hour while engaging in a conference call.
