CCHIT blogs about PHR privacy issues
As part of the development of criteria for personal health records (PHR), the CCHIT Work Group has spent a great deal of time discussing your privacy and how your PHR should handle it.
As one of the highest profit EMR companies of all time, CCHIT has taken up a promotional and education position in their blogging. Worth a read.
Short blog laments the high cost of EHR
Now if you want to know why more practices, particularly small practices, haven't gone this route here's why:
- Software licenses for 3 providers (2 part time): 23,985.00 - Interface with laboratory: 3,000.00 - Training & Implementation: 11,670.00 - Updates/Upgrades & Support: 5397.00 - Third Party Software: 850.00 - Clearinghouse for billing: 300.00 Grand Total: $45,227.00
This is a quick read, explains the financial quote received as being much too high, you might suggest software as a service, SAAS.
Group of announcements of HIT grants
Rural hospitals in South Dakota will receive $195,000 in grants to boost HIT initiatives. The funding originates with the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program, a federal initiative that provides grants to state governments to strengthen rural health.
A brief roundup of health IT grants for this month.
What are the ten main questions to ask a CCHIT Certified EHR vendor?
With the launch of the CCHIT Certified 08 products, vendors were given the option to publish answers to some of these questions on their certified product pages. For more information, see CCHIT Certified 08 products for Ambulatory, Inpatient, and Emergency Department.
Nice list of 10 questions from the CCHIT website/blog, they are taking a bold hand in promotion and education.
Assisted reproductive services can cause birth defects
Infants conceived with Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are two to four times more likely to have certain types of birth defects than children conceived naturally, according to a study by the CDC. The report, "Assisted Reproductive Technology and Major Structural Birth Defects, United States," was released in the journal Human Reproduction.
Always there is a price to pay for medical progress, this report is certainly bad news for the science.
Why the Dutch medical system is considered Europe's best
The Dutch system was closely followed by the Danish in second and the Austrian in third. Latvia came in at the bottom of the table of 31 countries in which the UK ranked at 13.
I'll try to look for more on the Dutch system, seems well thought-out, yet a very small country.
Illegal drugs for sale on the Internet tackled by UK regs
It is the first time that action has been taken on an international scale with participating countries including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.
I once bought some penicillin on the Internet, and the company would not stop calling me for a year, kept trying to sell me a refill.
Facial fillers: proper warning of the dangers demanded by FDA
"It is almost a no-brainer," said Dr. Michael Bigby, a Harvard Medical School dermatologist. "The current label is not adequate." The gel-like fillers, which have become hugely popular in the last few years, are injected into the face to smooth away wrinkles.
Baby boomer women are buying into this wrinkle dodge, not the safe thing it is thought to be, according to this FDA mandate.
Most common of childhood tumors studied at genetic level
Like other tumors, hemangiomas are caused by the abnormal proliferation of tissue. Since no other type of cell within the tissue displayed the same self-replicating tendency, the scientists concluded that the endothelial cells were the source of the tumors' growth.
Harvard is always doing original research, they are very proud of their work, and rightly so.
Download a copy of health reform report
Twenty-eight stakeholder organizations have published a report identifying and endorsing six national priorities to transform the health care industry.
This report is said to touch only lightly on health information technology.
What are the legal implications of live twittering in health care?
This edition begins with a summary of the raging Twitter Wars and includes a link to a post I did last week discussing some of the legal implications of live tweeting in health care.
I have not yet looked at the joys of Twitter, not that I think my life is all that interesting to be doing a minute-by-minute update of it.
TELUS invests 100 million dollars in Canada health care tech
As a sign of our commitment, we are announcing our plans to invest $100 million in developing TELUS Health Solutions over the next three years. We are very serious about making a difference in Canadian healthcare with applications and technology infrastructure that collects, processes, stores and delivers health information."
Let's watch this program over the next three years, perhaps we can learn something, in fact, I'm sure we will.
UK cardiac death database launched
Database to record sudden cardiac death and Post-Mortem results, will help Doctors to understand inheritable heart disease, looking into causes, prevalence and incidence of death. Program will also offer support & advice to close family members who may also be susceptible to sudden cardiac failure.
From England, Nick Harrington, our Publisher and local correspondent, I first thought of the research potential stored in the EMR of an entire country - how could we help but learn from such a huge database?
Another UK Health Data-Loss
Last week a Govt. contracted Atos Origin employee lost a USB stick (on a pub car-park) containing secure login details. This week a Leicester Council run nursery loses another USB stick containing children's details. The council stated that encryption software was made available to staff, including training. Wonder whether that process was really adhered to?
Did you know that a USB drive or stick can hold an entire EMR? We have discussed it in the EMR Forum. BTW, please email a news story to me and I'll feature it at the top of Gleeman's Daily News. This one's also from Nick, thanks Nick, we can only hope encryption was used.
Some Privileged UK patients beat the waiting list
Is this an indictment of UK Healthcare? Some patients wait 6-months for a hip-op, others are treated in under 3-weeks.
Before I read this story from Mostly Safe for Work, I thought to myself that truly, this is America's biggest fear of Government involvement in medicine: long waiting times, or even worse, unfair waiting periods-that we will not stand for. Then I read the article and got a chuckle.
Any sufficiently advanced EMR should be indistinguishable from magic?
Massive adoption will not be found in the ubiquity of digitial records, but in the fidelity of the experience regardless of what is behind the monitors. Paraphrasing Clarke's Third Law-should sufficiently advanced health records be indistinguishable?
If you love sci-fi, you will love this short blog on interoperability. Superbly written.
With Obama at the helm, Democratic leaders in Congress already have set policy sights much higher. They want to cover as many of the nation's uninsured as possible.
My main personal hope in this regard is that children under 18 will all be covered as a matter of humane policy. Didn't I hear somewhere that the Humane Society was originally formed to protect children?
MD on Call, an Atlanta-based, self-described "boutique practice," entered into a partnership with City Centre Properties LLC of Atlanta to provide residents of The Mansion on Peachtree hotel and residence with a basic services package that includes much of what a family medicine physician would do in the office, from a throat culture to wellness care to an ECG.
I like it, one can stay home almost indefinitely, ordering in food and medicine. Isolation here we come!
The new pill, developed by the Dutch group Philips, is an intelligent pill. Using the microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and drug reservoir contained inside, the pill can determine when it is in the correct portion of the digestive tract to release its medication.
Sounds like a great idea, a new way to lower the effective dose.
In the report, Burlington was one of the top cities with people who exercised regularly. Many of the city's residents participate in skiing, bicycling, hiking, and many other exercises that help them to stay fit and active.
The city also rates high in education, 40% of the people have college degrees. Poorest health rating was the city of Huntington, W.VA.
Those who slept less than seven hours nightly had a 47 percent higher risk of cancer than those who got more sleep among the physically active women, the researchers reported at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Just as I feared, there doesn't seem to be any substitute for either sleep and exercise, and most people don't seem to get enough of either one.
But no one should venture to start taking statins for that possible effort because of the efficacy and safety issues. Still, there are many things men can do to improve their performance. Physical exercise, vitamin C, peanuts or arginine supplements, omega 3 fatty acids and garlic are some foods that men can eat to boost their performance in bedroom.
Recent news suggests that statins may reduce heart attacks and strokes, and now could help with ED.
Study indicates that your belly girth is linked to death by all causes
They found men and women who had largest waists were twice as likely to die prematurely as those who had the smallest waists. Specifically, for each 2-inch increase in waist circumference, the death risk was increased by 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.
I like this kind of news, having recently lost 36 pounds, but I find lots of news every day that says fat is bad, bad, bad, and just to be clear, bad.
The Inquirer reports on the difficulties she faced after the surgery attempting to receive a full-body PET scan to rule out more cancer...
I hate to read these stories but I feel a duty to do so, how about you? It is quite a real problem that some people have NEVER had health insurance, never in their whole life.
Brendon,
Thanks to my EMR, I can tell you without hesitation as of this morning I've seen 1764 well checks this year and 2361 sick visits.
But the key, in this era where doctors can go broke and out of business, is once I cannot pay my staff who I so vitally need to keep this office going, and my overhead (landlords care not a whit about heroes) then I will have to close and do something else. I am trying to grow my solo practice (began in 2004), but it is not easy, despite being very busy now (25+ pts a day). Insurance companies know you are meat when you are solo. They barely cover my vaccine costs (20% of gross expenditures last year and even more this year) and they will drop reimbursements across the board whenever they get the chance, contracts be damned to them.
I love taking care of kids, but I can't go broke doing it while administrative overhead and insurance company greed eats the innards of medicine like a slow growing tumor.
Trust me, without an EMR, I wouldn't have made it this far in one of the worst paying pediatric markets in the country (Tucson).
Chris
EMR and PHR: What's in it for the doctors?
A new study in the American Journal of Managed Care tries to substantiate some benefits, noting that patients are more compliant with care when they have PHRs, and doctors are better kept abreast of treatment changes.
Although some doctors might think there is nothing in it for them, the new health technology spoken of in this article is for patients and doctors alike.
Do large health IT projects detract from universal health care goals?
As I state at my academic site on HIT difficulties (link), learning from others' mistakes - learning what not to do, aside from "best practices" - is important.
This blog takes the position that there is a choice between funding universal healthcare or funding massive health IT projects, and that if that is the case, it is better to fund the healthcare itself. Do you agree?
From Germany: Electronic Health Cards and Terminals
SCM Microsystems, Inc. a leading provider of solutions that open the Digital World, today announced its latest terminal for the German electronic health card program: the eHealth500 mobile terminal.
Another technology we are not even looking at, how far behind have we fallen anyway?
Great American Smokeout Nov.20 will find fewer U.S. smokers
An estimated 19.8 percent of U.S. adults (43.4 million people), were current smokers in 2007, down from 20.8 percent in 2006, according to a study in CDC′s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, released in advance of the Great American Smokeout. However, based on the current rate of decline, it is unlikely that the national health objective of reducing the prevalence of adult cigarette smoking to 12 percent or lower will be met by 2010.
I quit and so can you. Try the lozenges-I bet you can't even finish one.
Subspecialty of Clinical Informatics: Certification
If AMIA is successful, U.S. physicians would be able to earn true board certification in clinical informatics, on equal footing as radiation oncology, pediatric cardiology, critical care medicine, or any other subspecialty.
This is interesting, the birth of a new possible subspecialty doesn't happen every day, any interest from our doctors out there?
Blog about PHR sharing data: Google Health and MS HealthVault
What are some of the yabuts to Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault exchanging data? In this case yabuts refers to customer lock-in tactics and switching costs that might be imposed.
Discussion of interoperability for the two leading personal health record systems, so even at this basic level, it is not easy being compatible.
Advisory Group calls for standards in EHR templates
The idea is to make it easier for providers to comply with multiple reporting requirements by having templates in all EHRs that support pertinent documentation and reporting of data.
Sometimes the idea of interoperability comes to many people at once, in this case, at the very last meeting of the AHIC.
Privacy and using Google to predict flu trends
According to Google.org Flu Trends the aggregated search data can estimate flu activity in a state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.
From our friend at the Health Care Law Blog, here comes another privacy discussion. Spying on sick people-for shame!
Could there be a link between "green space" and good health?
Mitchell and Popham found that health disparities between the rich and the poor can be halved with citizens' access to green spaces.
It must have something to do with increased walking.
Will CCHIT survive under Obama?
WASHINGTON - With continued focus on how the Obama administration might affect healthcare IT, this week's news that the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology will likely stay in place is a welcome relief, say healthcare leaders.
How about it Al, will CCHIT survive the Obama admin?
New For iPhone: Merge makes it possible to view medical images
Merge Mobile technology will enable the development of applications to retrieve CT, MRI, X-ray and other images wirelessly, and to perform standard radiologic manipulations to guide decision-making, much like computer-based solutions such as PACS.
When is a phone not just a phone? It would seem a phone is almost never just a phone.
Did you know Nov. 14 was World Diabetes Day?
ALEXANDRIA, VA, Nov 14, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- The American Diabetes Association will join International Diabetes Federation and their worldwide global diabetes efforts on World Diabetes Day, November 14, to raise awareness of the growing diabetes epidemic. This year's theme for World Diabetes Day is Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.
I am so glad I did not have diabetes as a child, it is bad enough for an adult.
Doctor Suspended for insult on Doctor-only Forum
Does an insult on a Doctor-only web-forum contravene the GMC Good Medical practice guidelines? An Inverness surgeon Dr. Scot Jr. was suspended for six weeks for a insult against Dame Carol Black, chair of the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges. Black is a controversial figure with her involvement in the Modernising Medical Careers database fiasco. This left newly-qualified Doctors unable to work and hospital posts unfilled last year. RemedyUK are supporting a complaint against the GMC.
From the Nick Harrington "be careful what you write" file, as you can see, I welcome items from contributors whose material, I find, are never against the law-and always in good taste.
Lawyers petition GMC against architects of Medical Training Appointments System
The Doctors involved in the failed UK MTAS and Modernising Medical Careers systems (q.v. Doctor Suspended above) have been referred to the GMC to decide whether their professional and managerial actions fell seriously below standards expected of the profession. Doctors are still seeking scalps for job-placement problems when this Government Health IT project failed to work in 2007.
Another item from Great Britain, thanks, Nick, seems like English people argue a lot with each other. Just what we like in the Forum, so keep them coming. We can learn much about our own future as we watch the U.K. deal with things like EMR for the people.
EMR Interoperability - Is Canada Moving in the Right Direction?
Within the next month, CanadianEMR will host the first of a regular series of round table audio forums dealing with topical issues that converge at the interfaces between the acute, community and primary care systems.
Our own Dr. Murdoch recently suggested that Canada stop and drop all this effort toward interoperability. To better coordinate with the U.S.?
AAFP News Item: What do the patients really fear about EHR privacy?
Even as the federal government and the AAFP focus their resources on ensuring that America's physicians get onboard with electronic health records, or EHRs, some American consumers are wrestling with confidentiality concerns about the technology.
As we can see, there is an essential conflict between two goals, EHR and complete personal privacy. This is a true debate, and it will go on for years I think.
Bone marrow transplant possible cure for AIDS
Dr. Gero Huetter said Wedneday his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.
Could this be the big breakthrough, or is this due to a rare marrow?
Study recommends expensive HPV vaccine should also be given to males
"This opens the door to a wonderful opportunity to prevent illness," said Anna Giuliano, a Tampa-based researcher who worked on the Merck-funded study. She is an epidemiologist at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.
Anyone see a potential stock investment here? Double the customers.
Allergists correct Obama: no such thing as hypoallergenic dog
In response, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology issued a statement Wednesday saying, "There is no truly 'hypoallergenic' dog."
Who can help the new President? What dog would you suggest for his family? Most seem to pick the Poodle.
EPIC wins CCHIT Certs in three separate categories
Epic won the first certification for an enterprise EHR that provides comprehensive ambulatory, inpatient and emergency department EHRs that are interoperable.
Nice going, Epic, at least you are compatible with all versions of your product, which is something of an accomplishment.
Free cancer research software available for free downloading
The applications are intended for use by clinical researchers. They can be downloaded in a bundle or as individual components here. More information on caBIG is available at https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/.
Any of our free software fans, please let us know in the forum what you think of this software package-is it useful?
C. Peter Waegemann, CEO of the Medical Records Institute: letter to Obama
Your new Administration has the capacity and opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past and to create a new strategy for health information technology.
Great letter in its entirety, worth reading by all our members, this is a call for a new direction in our field of EMR.
77-hospital system selects NCR patient self-service kiosks
They then can use the kiosk to view and confirm appointment information, enter insurance information, electronically sign forms and make payments.
We have a major thread regarding kiosks in the EMR Forum which you may read here:
The people affected are obsessed with cleanliness, order, and symmetry, or are overcome by doubts and irrational fears.
I thought this was another illness that drugs like Prozac can treat.
Medical Humor: "Five Things Not to Bring to the Emergency Room"
It pays to keep both your common sense and your sense of humor as you head to the ER.
A bit of levity suggested by my good friend Dr. Alberto Borges.
Survey: Patients want access to their on-line medication records
Objective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the users' attitudes towards their access to "My dispensed medications" as part of a new interactive Internet service on prescribed medications.
Original paper, complete survey regarding patients and their desire for an on-line record of their medications, kept accurate "by some means".
Four PHR Vendors will be allowed to conduct CMS Demo
...the four winners (or might they be losers as they must shoulder all costs) who will have the opportunity to offer their PHR to CMS beneficiaries in Arizona and Utah.
Here is an opportunity for the four listed vendors to prove the value of PHR in at least two states.
Shift from silo'ed EHRs from a law blog standpoint
Tim Sturgill, MD JD at symtym provides an explanation and insight into the potential shift from silo'ed EHRs controlled by multiple providers to a Health Cloud centralized around a single PHR.
What are some of the legal issues of PHR and the so-called "health cloud"?
Overhaul of the coding for medical billing on the way
Government regulators are expected soon to overhaul the aging coding system that doctors and hospitals use to bill insurers -- a switch that many in health care say is necessary, but that could initially cause headaches for consumers and their doctors.
I expect to hear about this more in our Billings Forum, major change is on the way for the typical medical coding people.
For 30 million people in the U.K., iSoft launches LORENZO
LORENZO is highly scalable and proven and is being rolled out to manage over 30 million patient records as part of the world's largest civilian IT project-the EUR15.8 billion National Programme for IT for the UK's National Health Service.
This is very big, let's follow their progress, they are obviously way ahead of the U.S. in EMR deployment for the patients.
Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City connects HIT
During the last several years, more than 50 practices and clinics reminded the Salt Lake City system that national reference labs were putting the organization at a competitive disadvantage by providing interfaces that electronically deliver laboratory results directly into practice EMRs.
From the hospital on down to the doctors, the flow of EMR follows a typical path in this story. More examples all the time, progress moves.
Growing Pains: real but cause is not known
Growing pains are often described as an ache or throb in the legs - often in the front of the thighs, the calves or behind the knees.
Article suggests a serious approach, might be an actual disease, don't ignore the kids on this one.
Overweight children have the neck arteries of 45-year-olds
"As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are," said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, who led one of the studies. "This is a wake-up call."
More bad news for kids who are gaining too much weight, very lasting harm is being done.
Be careful mixing Plavix with drugs for heartburn, new study warns
Researchers found that patients who were taking Plavix with popular prescription heartburn drugs, including AstraZeneca PLC's (AZN, News) Nexium, were significantly more likely to be hospitalized for a heart attack, stroke, chest pain or a coronary artery bypass operation than those who took Plavix alone.
This could serve as an early warning to doctors and patients, I look for these every day.
Study of drug-resistant TB shows we are doing better
Unlike what is happening in much of the developing world, new U.S. cases of tuberculosis have declined sharply over the last 15 years.
This story is disturbing to me in that we have ANY of this form of TB in the good old U.S.A.
Britain calling for increase in sperm donors
The donor shortage may be due in part to a change in the law in 2005, which took away donors' anonymity. People conceived from donor sperm after the law took effect have the right, once they turn 18, to know the identity of their biological father.
So it turns out to be nothing more than a privacy issue.
Who Really Owns Your Health Information?
Another concern I have about making the patient the owner of his/her records is how this will be implemented by people who may be homeless, incarcerated, unable to understand the disclosure process, or otherwise off the grid of being able to keep track of their own information.
The debate continues over who should own PHR data and who should maintain it.
Slide Presentation of How PHRs Work at Kaiser
Today I gave the first official presentation in my new skin as a physician with The Permanente Federation.
If you are really serious about learning how Kaiser looks at PHR, look at this presentation, it is brilliantly done.
Galen Consultant blogs about "A practice with no walls"
While the original implementations were split across two Organizations, each independent practice would constitute its own Organization within the Allscripts EHR and integrate its own Practice Management (PM) systems.
On the philosophy of EHR implementation, great blog from real experts.
Florida moves toward giving docs web access to Medicaid patients' EHRs
She thinks that the lessons learned from Leon County--mainly on usability issues, such as signing on and displaying records--can be utilized throughout the state. She also thinks that the expansion of the provider portal is particularly important.
An expansion of a pilot project in 2007, this is an ambitious move.
Medicare rates poorly in PQRI
Washington -- Even as Medicare's Physician Quality Reporting Initiative approaches the end of its 2008 run, many doctors are still trying to figure out what went wrong with the 2007 PQRI.
As we have discussed in the forum, there are many imperfections in this system, but it will move ahead next year.
Uninsured patients are not overcrowding ER says study
But the uninsured are generally not showing up in EDs for nonurgent care and they are not the primary reason EDs are becoming more crowded.
This is conflicting with what people think they know about the uninsured yet is WRONG.
Three large drug manufacturers will tell of payments to doctors
...the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, that would mandate such reporting. The bill is widely expected to pass in some form next year.
Yes lets spread some sunshine on this aspect of drug marketing.
FDA mandates drug safety Web site
The development of the Web site (www.fda.gov/cder/drugsafety.htm) is one of the many requirements of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007.
A new resource for all, FDA forced by law to establish this web site, so make use of it if you can.
Deaths of 8,000 blacks could be prevented by BP treatment
The lives of nearly 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could figure out a way to bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a surprising new study found.
This was a popular CNN news feed Tuesday, on TV all day.
Texting while driving and trans fats both called unhealthy by AMA
At its semiannual policy meeting, the nation's largest physicians' group agreed to support any state and federal efforts to ban the use of artificial trans fats in U.S. restaurants and bakeries. And it agreed to lobby for more state legislation banning text-messaging while driving or operating machinery.
Your AMA at work, they are right about both being bad for the health.
Poor sleep and heart disease are linked in study
In a study of more than 1,200 Japanese adults with high blood pressure, the investigators found that those who slept for less than 7.5 hours each night were more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke or die of cardiac arrest over a 4-year period.
This has been hinted at for many years, good to see an actual study about it, done in Japan where hearts are healthy.
New test for heart disease could become routine part of physical exams
If the test detects a high level of a specific protein, patients could reduce their risk of heart disease by using popular statin drugs, the study found.
Here is another study that could be viewed as being pro-statin, per our debate in the Medical Forum.
Medical Record Blackmail Attempted
CNN reports on what may be a harbinger of trends to come: Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit management companies (PBM's), received an anonymous threat that, unless it paid an extortionate demand, millions of its patient records would be released.
New crimes have always followed new technology, EMR is no exception.
Remote patient monitoring tested in Cleveland
The Clinic is partnering with Microsoft HealthVault to help certain patients monitor chronic conditions -- high blood pressure, diabetes and heart failure -- at home.
Actual testing of the tech, appears to be a future for remote watching of patient health, could save lots of money for the system.
Young girls carry the most risk of catching an STD
The sexually active adolescent girl is most at risk for getting an STD. Adolescents are at a much higher risk of developing STDs. In my blog on the HPV vaccine, I noted that 74 percent of HPV occurs between the ages of 15 and 24.
I suppose this is another "common sense" issue, but it opened my eyes.
Vitamins C and E do not help men avoid heart disease
Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Md.
I take vitamin C to avoid scurvy and a multiple vitamin just for the heck of it.
New report on "what health workers should know when working with EMRs"
The tool is available free of charge, and breaks down core competencies necessary into five major areas: health information literacy, informatics skills, privacy and confidentiality, data technical security and basic computer literacy skills.
Any reports on this? Any opinions of the concept? With information, is more always better?
New Intel remote monitor could reduce costs
"Health care is an area where getting and gathering the right information, and getting decisions made in a timely matter can make an enormous difference in patient care. We hope this technology helps with that," Mariah Scott, head sales and marketing for Intel's Digital Health Group, said.
Two stories in one day regarding remote monitoring of patients....
Stem Cells, Children's Health at the top of Obama's list
Sunday's political TV shows provided more hints that a reversal of the current executive order banning federal funding of research involving new lines embryonic stem cells could happen quickly.
Any doubts out there that Obama at least got the message that the people are demanding a health care system for themselves?
At risk youth are not getting flu shotsInfluenza vaccination rates are still far too low for adolescents who suffer from asthma and other illnesses that predispose them to complications from the flu.
I am hearing more and more good things in the news about flu shots.
Asthma-Causing Immune Cells Revealed
The team, led by Mikael Pittet and Ralph Weissleder, visualized eosinophils at single-cell resolution using various noninvasive real-time molecular imaging technologies...
They are getting at the cause of asthma by this new imaging technique.
Patient alerts seem to boost compliance
That's the message in a new study conducted by ActiveHealth Management and published in the November issue of The American Journal of Managed Care.
This is a topic we think of as related to EMR, but here is a good study that shows these alerts help patients.
IT vendors in the news
Nuance Communications, Inc. of Burlington, Mass. has announced that its PowerScribe for Radiology software suite has been rolled out at 10 of the 15 hospitals that collectively form the Baptist Memorial Health Care network.
Many other vendors featured in this 4-page story, a vendor roundup for sure.
Headphones can mess up a pacemaker
Tucking the headphones for your iPod into your coat pocket might not be exactly heart-stopping, but it could interfere with the normal functioning of your implanted cardiac device.
By far, this was the main health story of the day, making it to TV, radio, and the Internet.
Australian public mandates national e-health system
The survey of 2700 people conducted by UMR Research found that 9 of 10 respondents in all states want the Commonwealth to manage the deployment and operation of an e-health record system. The same proportion supported the introduction of new privacy laws to increase protection of personal medical information.The people are the customers, the patients, and can 9 out of ten be wrong? Sure, why not?
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Interview with Kaiser VP of Online Services
At Kaiser, "The EMR is the Foundation of Everything We Do"
Interesting interview with Anna-Lisa Silvestre, very serious use of EMR.
Metastasis suppressor gene found
Over the past 20 years, only a dozen or so metastasis suppressor genes have come to light. But now Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Michael Green has developed a systematic method for screening the genomes of cancer cells to detect likely metastasis suppressors.
Important research from one of my new sources of information, sounds big.
What are some of the ways to treat angina?
You may have several options for your angina treatment: angioplasty and stenting, medications or lifestyle changes. Discover the benefits and risks of each treatment.
Nice article for the patient who may have been diagnosed with angina, very informative.
How to handle eating out when you have diabetes
For some people, eating out is an occasional indulgence. For others, it's a way of life. Either way, moderate portions and careful choices can help you make restaurant meals part of your overall plan for diabetes nutrition.
Here's a good article for all your diabetes patients, I am one and found it enlightening.
Google Health product manager Roni Zeiger: highly optimistic
According to Zeiger, there have to be regular and secure data feeds from multiple sources, including physician and hospital electronic health records (EHRs), insurance companies, laboratories, and pharmacies.
For those who follow the Google Health saga, here is some great info.
E-Prescribing Vendors: no financial excuses for not using the tech
If the vendor booths at the recent Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) annual meeting were any indication, the promise of 2 percent Medicare bonuses for e-prescribing has captured the attention of doctors and spurred all kinds of interest in health-IT.
The more I hear about that show, the more I am interested in MGMA.
Wireless Health Connectivity
...until disparate industry groups learn to work together-there will be a "gap between what we are technically capable of doing and what we can actually do...
This is a report of a symposium held in Boston, MA last week.
Swollen Lymph Nodes: what does it mean to a patient?
Lymph nodes (erroneously called lymph glands) are a part of the lymphatic system, a component of the body's immune system. Swollen lymph nodes may signal an infection.
Very detailed self-help article, I find this to be the most frequently ignored symptom, at least in myself.
Pro-statin article, claims more should take it
A large new study suggests that millions more people could benefit from taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, even if they have low cholesterol, because the drugs can significantly lower their risk of heart attacks, strokes and death.
We are debating this idea in our Medical Forum, any changes of opinion due to THIS study?
Researchers publish their OWN medical records and DNA data
Led by Harvard Medical School genetics professor George Church, nine people plan to post their records and the DNA sequence of about one-fifth of their genes on the Web.
Brave new world? Will they EVER be able to get insurance after this?
Recalls of the week by The Associated Press
In addition to two toy products with too much lead, product recalls this week included hypodermic syringes used by diabetics for insulin injections and a spray-on fabric protector.
It's what you DON'T know that can hurt you when it comes to recalls.
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