By Joseph Conn March 25, 2008
Physicians can begin signing up online for a free, electronic patient-safety alert system that will notify them via e-mail as well as by letter of Food and Drug Administration warnings for drugs or medical devices.
The launch of the Health Care Notification Network is the culmination of an effort by the iHealth Alliance, a not-for-profit consortium of the American Medical Association and other medical societies, medical malpractice insurance carriers and other healthcare organizations.
“The HCNN is a separate network, but it is a byproduct of a conversation we had with the FDA three years ago,” said Ed Fotsch, a physician who is chief executive officer of Medem, the developer of a physicians communication portal and patient personal health-record service founded in 1999 by the AMA and several national medical societies. The Medem personal health record is overseen by the iHealth Alliance.
“We told them (the FDA) we wanted a data feed. If there was a recall or a warning we wanted to be able to send it directly to the patients.” As a result, Medem, a subscriber to MedWatch, the FDA’s patient-safety and adverse-events-reporting program, began sending alerts out to patients if they matched a medication in their iHealthRecord.
“We started this over two years ago and send an alert out several times a month on average,” Fotsch said. “The irony was that the patients would be getting these alerts at the same day electronically and the docs would be getting them three days later in the mail. Sure enough, we started getting hate mail from the docs.”
Physicians asked if they could get the online alerts, too, Fotsch said. “Now the answer is yes, through the HCNN.” In addition to an e-mail system, the service will work with both a patient’s personal health record and a physician’s electronic medical-record system, according to a media statement released today in connection with a news conference this morning to launch the HCNN. Fees to maintain the system will be paid by either pharmaceutical or device manufacturers or the FDA, Fotsch said. Negotiations are under way with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to incorporate public health warnings into the system, Fotsch said.