Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc
About Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc
Dr. Fraser is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He trained in general Medicine, Cardiology and knowledge based systems in the UK and completed a fellowship in Clinical Decision Making and Cardiology at MIT and the New England Medical Center. As the Director of Informatics and Telemedicine at Partners In Health he leads the development of web-based medical record systems and data analysis tools to support the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV in Peru, Haiti, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi and the Philippines. The first system developed, the PIH-EMR, has supported the management and monitoring of over 12,000 patients receiving treatment for MDR-TB in Peru. Dr. Fraser has also led the development of the HIV-EMR, which is used to support the treatment of more than 16,000 HIV patients in rural Haiti.
Dr. Fraser is a co-founder with colleagues from the Regenstrief Institute, of an international collaboration to develop flexible, open source medical record systems in developing countries - the OpenMRS collaborative. OpenMRS is now also used to support patient treatment in PIH projects in Rwanda, Lesotho and Malawi and Peru as well as projects in at least ten other countries led by the Regenstrief Institute, the Millennium Villages Project and other organisations. He also leads the development of pharmacy information management systems, and has a strong interest in the evaluation of medical information systems in developing countries.
Role(s) / Profession(s)
- Information Technology Professional
- Physician
Organization
- Brigham And Women's Hospital - BWH
- Harvard Medical School
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT
- Partners In Health - PIH
Language(s)
- English
Recent Contributions
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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc started a discussion "Low prevalence of comprehensive EMR systems in US hospitals except the VA" in the Health IT community.
In a recent paper Ashish Jha and colleagues surveyed the "Use of Electronic Health Records in U.S. Hospitals" [NEJM 360,2009:1628-1638]. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMsa0900592#T3 It is a follow on from an earlier paper which had shown a low rate of use of EMR systems in US primary care. What was striking about this study was that only 2.9% of the hospitals responding to the survey had what was characterized as a comprehensive EMR system. That was defined as ...
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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc replied to "The potential of modular design for EMR systems" in the Health IT community.
Hi Roger, thanks for your post on this. In general there is no conflict with the use of Open Source software and ensuring data confidentiality and security. The code that you use is compiled and so it is an issue of good design rather than keeping the source code secret. Linux has a much better track record than Windows for security and freedom from bugs. That stems partly from the number of good programmers who ...
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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc replied to "The potential of modular design for EMR systems" in the Health IT community.
Good to see a discussion developing here, it is surprising how little progress has been made on this issue in the US. However I would raise concerns with the idea that the local data collection is a minor issue that can be left to a simple web form or even an Excel spreadsheet - would that it were so easy! The local interaction with an EMR system is a big part of the challenge, especially ...
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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc replied to "rapidSMS, an SMS platform for health systems" in the Health IT community.
I have been looking at systems like RapidSMS and it is exciting to see tools that provide access to decision support in remote areas where staff often have limited support systems and training. However I have a couple of major concerns here for me. Firstly as you note there are real limitations on what data can be entered in an SMS message. More seriously, the issue of data quality is a constant challenge in all ...
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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc started a discussion "OpenMRS annual developers and implementors meeting" in the Health IT community.
The 4th OpenMRS deveopers and Implementors meeting was held last week near Cape Town, South Africa. The community around OpenMRS has grown rapidly in the last 2 years and we had 120 attendees from more than 22 countries. The conference is a venue for developers to share ideas and code, for implementors to see the new technologies and components, share their experiences and advice the developers, and for policy makers and funders to see the ...
Recent Recommendations
- None at this time.
