CCHIT shut out of final certification rule
Dana Blankenhorn, ZDNet Healthcare
“The Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) has lost any hope for a monopoly on certifying electronic health record (EHR) software for meaningful use.
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Articles
Humana launches mobile games for health
Brian Dolan, mobihealthnews
“Humana, a US health insurance company with more than 10 million members, announced today that its Games for Health team had launched the first of several iPhone apps that use gaming to help people engage in healthy activities. The first game, Colorfall, is now available in the iTunes AppStore for $2.99.
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Cyber Care: Will Robots Help the Elderly Live at Home Longer?
Brian T. Horowitz, Scientific American
“Mini robot vacuums are one thing, but larger robots may soon become a part of everyday life for the elderly, performing tasks that could help delay the dreaded move of loved ones to a nursing home or assisted living facility.
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Blog Post: Observations: Eye Opening Issues
Lodewijk Bos, ICMCC
“Some published titles last week: “Public Still Pretty Clueless About Electronic Medical Records“, “Millions have online medical records ‘without knowing it’“, “esalud en España, según datos recogidos por la Fundación Telefónica” (eHealth in Spain, according to data gathered by the Fundación Telefónica), “Mobile health apps to disintermediate PHRs?“
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The case for electronic medical records–why the time to act is now
Zimmerman TG. Osteopathic Family Physician, 2(4)
Research consistently suggests that electronic medical records (EMRs) provide many clinical and economic benefits associated with their adoption. Improved coordination of patient care, reduced medication errors, and improved preventive screening rates are just a few of the clinical benefits. The federal government has placed considerable emphasis on interoperability in the hopes that providers at different facilities will be able to exchange health data to maximize the quality and speed of care. The administrative benefits of EMRs include reduced transcription costs, more accurate coding, and increased efficiency of claims submission. Because of their potential, the federal government has progressively increased its efforts to facilitate the widespread adoption of interoperable EMR systems.
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Trends in PACS architecture
Bellon E et al, European Journal of Radiology, 2010
Radiological Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) have only relatively recently become abundant. Many hospitals have made the transition to PACS about a decade ago. During that decade requirements and available technology have changed considerably. In this paper we look at factors that influence the design of tomorrow’s systems, especially those in larger multidisciplinary hospitals. We discuss their impact on PACS architecture (a technological perspective) as well as their impact on radiology (a management perspective).
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Logrando la interoperabilidad de nuestras historias clínicas electrónicas (y 4)
Fran Sánchez, El cuaderno de bitácora de Fran Sánchez
“Finalizo hoy (ya por fin, ¿no? Jeje 
) el comentario sobre el artículo en FlashTICSalut
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Hearing on Capitol Hill
Carolyn Bloch, Federal Telemedicine News
“The Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs on June 16th held a hearing to discuss current Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare services provided in rural areas. Robert Jesse, M.D., PhD, Acting Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health at the Veterans Health Administration, appeared before the Committee to describe how telehealth is helping veterans in rural areas. According to the VA, between 30 and 50 percent of telehealth activity in the VA supports veterans in rural and highly rural areas with ongoing growth anticipated.
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eHI’s Capitol Hill Event
Carolyn Bloch, Federal Telemedicine News
“The eHealth Initiative’s (eHI) June 14th event on Capitol Hill was held at the start of Health IT week. eHi is actively working to ensure patient engagement and patient access to information as an integral part of the health IT movement. A demonstration at the event showed how technology helps stroke survivors and enables health professionals provide good care at a distance.
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Computerised monitoring systems help doctors save lives
newKerala
“Automatic transmission of information takes place via a wireless modem in the patient’s room from an electrocardiograph unit fitted under the skin.
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What if blogs were run like a paper medical record system?
Rob Lamberts, KevinMD
“I always find it very ironic to see doctors bashing EMR on the Internet. They are bashing a tool designed to gather and organize information, improve communication, and give immediate access to important information, while using a tool that gathers and organizes information, improves communication, and gives immediate access to important information.
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Rules and Access Rights of the Estonian Integrated e-Health System
Tiik M. Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
There should be a clear understanding that when implementing an electronic health record system (EHR), one of the hardest problems we have to solve is the access rights. In Estonia this process lasted for three years and involved all stakeholders of the healthcare sector. Special ethical committee was established to advise the decision makers and doctors to help them understand the ethical dilemmas from the patient’s and society’s point of view.
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A neuro-fuzzy decision support system for the diagnosis of heart failure
Akinyokun CO et al, Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
A neuro-fuzzy decision support system is proposed for the diagnosis of heart failure. The system comprises; knowledge base (database, neural networks and fuzzy logic) of both the quantitative and qualitative knowledge of the diagnosis of heart failure, neuro-fuzzy inference engine and decision support engine. The neural networks employ a multi-layers perception back propagation learning process while the fuzzy logic uses the root sum square inference procedure. The neuro-fuzzy inference engine uses a weighted average of the premise and consequent parameters with the fuzzy rules serving as the nodes and the fuzzy sets representing the weights of the nodes. The decision support engine carries out the cognitive and emotional filtering of the objective and subjective feelings of the medical practitioner.
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Metaboli-Net: Online Groupware System Providing Counseling Guidance for Patients with Metabolic Syndrome
Kuwata S et al, Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
This study presented a newly developed online groupware system, Metaboli-Net, to yield counseling guidance on diet and exercise to patients with metabolic syndrome. A distinctive feature adopted in the system to maintain the retention rate of patients was the social network service (SNS) that enables the patients to share their dietary and relevant health information with other participants in the same group on the network.
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Holism, Health and Data – Managing the Person-centred Digital Haystack
Rigby M. Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
There is currently very legitimate pressure to change the function of health information systems to more explicitly serve and support the individual. Concurrently other support services to health, including condition monitoring, social care and intelligent housing, add to the complexity of patient health related data. A paradigm shift is needed, to recognize that many agencies and systems outside as well as within the health sector all work to support the citizen’s health, yet the essential integrated view is not being provided, even though much needed not least by the citizen and their agents. Broker technologies can enable this new paradigm.
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The mixed management of patients’ medical records: responsibility sharing between the patient and the physician
Quantin C et al. Medical and Care Compunetics 6. 2010
Through this article, we propose a mixed management of patients’ medical records, so as to share responsibilities between the patient and the Medical Practitioner by making Patients responsible for the validation of their administrative information, and MPs responsible for the validation of their Patients’ medical information. Our proposal can be considered a solution to the main problem faced by patients, health practitioners and the authorities, namely the gathering and updating of administrative and medical data belonging to the patient in order to accurately reconstitute a patient’s medical history. This method is based on two processes.
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Exploring the link between Populomics and Knowledge Management: patient-oriented case exemplars
Bali RK and Gibbons MC, Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
The challenge of population-level health problems, such as healthcare disparities, encompasses socio-behavioural, community and biologic factors and advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs). These elements are reflected in the key ethos of contemporary knowledge management (KM), as knowledge emerges from the confluence of people, process and technology.
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Patient Opportunities in the Estonian Electronic Health Record System
Tiik M, Ross P. Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
Estonia is the first country which has implemented a nationwide electronic health record system and gives full access to its citizens. This provides new opportunities to citizens, healthcare providers and e-health developers.
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An Ontology-Based Tool for the Correspondences between Specialist and Consumer Medical Lexicons for the Geriatrics Domain
Bonacina S, Pinciroli F. Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
New services devoted to improve personalized healthcare are emerging from information technology developments. Personal health record systems allow the patients to participate actively in their healthcare process. However, the dissemination and use of personal health record systems face with some barriers, for example low health literacy that leads to discrepancy in understanding medical concepts.
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User-specific perspectives on ontologies
Brochhausen M et al, Medical and Care Compunetics 6, 2010
Ontologies are more and more used in clinical informatics in different settings and supporting different functionalities. Most experts see the role of ontologies as operating in a black box and being invisible for the end-user. With respect to some of the systems that have recently been developed this is only partly possible. Therefore, we provide a methodology to create an end-user perspective on a clinical ontology.
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