Privacy concerns may take back seat
David Burda, ModernHealthcare
“Patients may be less concerned about protecting the privacy of their medical information if disseminating that information widely means better care.
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Articles
HHS publishes strategy to improve national healthcare quality
Mary Mosquera, Government Health IT
“The Health & Human Services Department has released the National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care to promote quality health care focused on the needs of patients. At the same time, it wants to make the health care system work better for physicians and other healthcare providers, through such things as reducing their administrative burdens and helping them collaborate more to improve care.
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EHRs should be part of healthcare organization’s disaster recovery strategy
Patty Enrado, EHRWatch
“The triple disasters unfolding in Japan are heart-rending for the global community to witness. It’s a sobering time, however, to re-assess where weaknesses lie to ensure that the country down to entities are well prepared for any kind of disaster to hit.
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Study: Electronic Health Records Improve Care In Kenya
Jesse Emspak, International Business Times
“Electronic health records are often discussed as a solution for developed nations, but a study from the Regenstrief Institute and the schools of medicine at Indiana University and Kenya’s Moi University explores the impact of electronic records on medical care in a developing country.
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PAZIO biedt patiënt persoonlijk informatiesysteem
DigitaleZorg.nl
“Het gezondheidsportaal PAZIO zet innovatieve internettools in om de zorg voor de patiënt beter, goedkoper en toegankelijker te maken. Met ICT-partner PharmaPartners wordt via MijnGezondheid.net verdergaande integratie tussen het portaal en het huisartsinformatiesysteem (HIS) en hoogwaardige functionaliteit gerealiseerd.
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Post-Jeopardy, Computer Watson Is Taking on Medicine
Sarah Kessler, Mashable
“The computer that defeated humanity’s finest Jeopardy players in February isn’t stopping at game show domination. Its creators have been busy retrofitting the computer to help doctors diagnose and treat patients.
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Healthcare Social Media Is Not Social Media
Phil Baumann, Health Is Social
“I think we need to understand the differences among different kinds of social media and how the different kinds fit or do not fit into Healthcare. My concern is that too many advocates of social media who want to see Healthcare adoption of these technologies are thinking in terms of consumer social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.). We need to expand our conception of social media beyond that view.
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Mobile health aid to Japan about more than technology
Dan Bowman, FierceHealthIT
“It’s often easy to forget amid all the hype of various technologies and collaborations that people–both providers and patients–remain at the heart of mobile healthcare.
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Smartphone health apps popular, but do they work ?
Richard, World of DTC Marketing
“Despite popularity of health applications on smartphones there has been little research on how well apps work, or even if any comply with known public health guidelines on how to change people’s behaviors. Early studies suggest that nearly all antismoking apps fail to connect users to proven methods that help people quit smoking. Weight-loss apps fare slightly better.
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Health Information Technology ‘Control Tower’ Could Improve Earthquake Response
ScienceDaily
“A new study published by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of California, Davis, foresees improvements in patient outcomes after a major earthquake through more effective use of information technology.
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Study: Virtual medicine as effective as physical doc visits
Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
“Results of a five-year study on telemedicine showed that patients can be treated virtually by physicians as effectively as if the patients made physical visits to the doctor’s office. In another finding, the remote treatment also improved doctor-patient communications.
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Telemedicine and Earthquakes
GlobalMedia
“In terms of technology, you would expect the Japanese, as a nation, to be highly evolved. So, it came as no surprise to me after the earthquake and tsunami to find that Japan was an early adopter of telemedicine. Despite the seriousness of the situation the Japanese face, you would probably agree that we can expect them to handle it as well as any country could because they are so resourceful.
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Legal, Ethical, and Financial Dilemmas in Electronic Health Record Adoption and Use
Sittig DF, Singh H. Pediatrics, 2011
Electronic health records (EHRs) facilitate several innovations capable of reforming health care. Despite their promise, many currently unanswered legal, ethical, and financial questions threaten the widespread adoption and use of EHRs. Key legal dilemmas that must be addressed in the near-term pertain to the extent of clinicians’ responsibilities for reviewing the entire computer-accessible clinical synopsis from multiple clinicians and institutions, the liabilities posed by overriding clinical decision support warnings and alerts, and mechanisms for clinicians to publically report potential EHR safety issues. Ethical dilemmas that need additional discussion relate to opt-out provisions that exclude patients from electronic record storage, sale of deidentified patient data by EHR vendors, adolescent control of access to their data, and use of electronic data repositories to redesign the nation’s health care delivery and payment mechanisms on the basis of statistical analyses.
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Heart monitoring garments using textile electrodes for healthcare applications
Cho H et al, Journal of Medical Systems, 35(2)
We measured the electrical activity signals of the heart through vital signs monitoring garments that have textile electrodes in conductive yarns while the subject is in stable and dynamic motion conditions. To measure the electrical activity signals of the heart during daily activities, four types of monitoring garment were proposed. Two experiments were carried out as follows: the first experiment sought to discover which garment led to the least displacement of the textile electrode from its originally intended location on the wearer’s body. In the second, we measured and compared the electrical activity signals of the heart between the wearer’s stable and dynamic motion states.
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Announcing the Alembic Foundation: An Initiative for Better Health Data Sharing and Personal Data Management
Brian Ahier, Ahier.net
“The Alembic Foundation today announced its incorporation as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) to design and build Open Source technologies that empower citizens so they can understand, participate in and help guide the services-driven, networked information economy of the 21st century.
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Quarter of practices link to Welsh SCR
Fiona Barr, e-Health Insider Primary Care
“More than 25% of GP practices in Wales are now feeding information into the country’s summary record via INPS’s Vision 360 data sharing solution.
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Making it all come together
George Hickman, ModernHealthcare
“If we are to be successful in achieving meaningful adoption of EHRs, many things must cooperate. Better said, many people must cooperate to ensure that we can make technology interrelate. As a chief information officer, I usually write on behalf of provider organizations in matters related to technology. This time, I am writing as someone who wants to see our industry be successful for the good of our healthcare-related missions.
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Onderzoeker: EPD niet te beveiligen
Security.nl
“Het Elektronisch Patiëntendossier is niet te beveiligen, dat zegt Guido van ‘t Noordende, onderzoeker aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Van ‘t Noordende had een expertdiscussie met Bart Jacobs, hoogleraar computerbeveiliging in Nijmegen, die stelt dat het EPD wel veilig is te maken.
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Direct Project Specifications Achieving Widespread Adoption: Could Positively Impact Care Coordination Soon for Millions of Americans
Doug Fridsma, Health IT Buzz
“As an internal medicine physician, I know how hard it was to coordinate patient care across diverse health care systems. Primary care providers struggle to keep up with the flow of information coming in and going out of their offices on faxes, couriered documents, and hand carried patient notes. The Direct Project was created to address this problem head-on by creating a simple, secure way to send this information electronically, so that providers can concentrate on what counts: excellent patient care.
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Stage 2 of EMR bonus program seen as too onerous
Charles Fiegl, amednews
“Medical associations are warning that overly strict meaningful use criteria proposed by the Dept. of Health and Human Services for the next phase of the Medicare and Medicaid electronic medical records incentive program could dissuade physicians from participating.
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