The American Health Information Management Association's 80th Annual Convention and Exhibit opened Monday at the Washington State Convention Center with an emphasis on personalized medicine.
The morning agenda included a talk by Alan Guttmacher, MD, of the National Institutes of Health, called "A Physician's View of Personalized Medicine." In addition, Wyllie Burke, MD, of the University of Washington, was scheduled to talk about the ethics and policy of using genetic information in healthcare.
Executives from Carlsbad, Calif.-based 23andME said they're planning to discuss the future of personal genome services and personalized medicine.
"We believe the future holds the promise of far more extensive understanding and the opportunity to help make personalized medicine a reality," said Linda Avey, co-founder of 23andME.
"The ratio of benefit to harm will vary with different tests and clinical settings, and may sometimes be difficult to predict, said Burke. "Developing strategies to distinguish beneficial from neutral or potentially harmful applications is an important ethical and policy challenge."
Aside from personalized medicine, key topics at this year's event include medical identity theft, personal health records, conversion from an ICD-9 code set to and ICD-10 code set for coding claims, and Medicare's Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) Program.
Alpharetta, Ga-based HealthPort is demonstrating its technology, called HealthportRACpro. On Sunday, company officials staged a panel discussion on RAC.
"The RAC pilot program has wreaked havoc for providers in California, Florida and New York," said Nancy Hirschl, president of Hirschl and Associates. "When expanded to the remaining 47 states, it will certainly cause major disruption."
AHIMA is slated to present a position statement on ICD-10 at a news conference Monday. Linda Kloss, the CEO of AHIMA, has said the organization supports the Oct. 1, 2011 deadline for conversion, as proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
"We regard this as a significant step forward in the march toward the use of classification systems that reflect 21st Century medical knowledge within a foreseeable timeframe," Kloss said.
On Tuesday, Kerry Weems, CMS' Acting Administrator, is slated to bring the convention up to date on federal activities on healthcare reform.