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Hamish Fraser, MBChB, MRCP, MSc

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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
    Website: http://www.brighamandwomens.org/ Type: Medical Institution Country: United States About: Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) is a 747-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine and surgery. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, involving more than 800 physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty.
  • Harvard Medical School
    Website: http://hms.harvard.edu/hms/home.asp Type: Academic Institution Country: United States About: Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) mission is to create and nurture a diverse community of the best people committed to leadership in alleviating human suffering caused by disease. Students and more than 7,500 full-time faculty in 11 academic departments located on the School's Boston campus, in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 18 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes, or at 30 research centers, divisions, and institutes, advance the School’s mission every day. Within HMS, the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (DGHSM) works in close collaboration with the GHD project teams, from participating in GHDonline communities to developing the GHD academic platform.
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT
    Website: http://web.mit.edu/ Type: Academic Institution Country: United States About: The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
  • Partners In Health - PIH
    Website: http://www.pih.org/ Type: Non-Governmental Organization Country: United States About: Partners In Health, co-founded by physicians Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim, serves millions of poor patients in nine countries, providing them with extensive health care and social services that address the root causes of poor health. By successfully proving that providing comprehensive, community-based medical care for complex diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis is not just possible but essential, the organization has helped bring about significant changes in global health policies and practices.

Work Location(s)

  • United States

Hamish's Communities

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 ...

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Joined

March 25, 2009

Contributions

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