Zina Moukheiber, Forbes
“Francisco-based provider of free web-based electronic health records (EHRs) raised $23 million in a round led by Founders Fund, a venture capital firm run by billionaire Peter Thiel, a PayPal founder and early investor in Facebook. In a press release, Thiel declared: “Practice Fusion revolutionizes our interactions with the medical community, just as Facebook did for social networking.”
[ More ]
Joseph Goedert, HDM Breaking News
“Half of more than 1,300 physician group practices recently surveyed expect to buy an electronic health records system during the next 24 months, according to CapSite, a Burlington, Vt.-based research and advisory firm. And 70 percent of those not purchasing say they already have an EHR that will be certified for meaningful use.
[ More ]
Fisher DA. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 26(7)
Although electronic medical records (EMR) are considered a key component to improving health care quality and, potentially, efficiency, only 1.5% of US hospitals surveyed in 2008 had a comprehensive EMR1. In contrast, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has had a comprehensive EMR since the 1990s. In this issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine the article by Humphrey et al.2 provides an interesting example of the promise and the unexpected lessons encountered while attempting to harness the power of the VHA EMR to improve the process of screening for colorectal cancer.
[ More ]
CMIO
“A recent study examining the effects of introducing health IT in long-term care found that nursing home residents responded positively to health IT, but no significant care improvements were realized, according to a recent article published online in the Journal of Aging and Health.
[ More ]
Stan Gibson, SearchHealthIT
“As the HITECH Act points out, the main benefits of electronic health record (EHR) adoption for individual health care organizations are improved efficiency and care quality, as well as reduced health care costs. The real kicker, though, is when records are linked through health information exchange (HIE).
[ More ]
Urmimala Sarkar, Informatics for Consumer Health
“With all the recent discussion of internet use, health information technology (HIT) and health care, it’s important to talk about who might be getting left behind. With the HIT revolution, the digital divide is becoming an increasingly important consideration for health care. As a primary care provider in a safety-net health system, I worry that my patients, who are low-income and often uninsured, may not benefit from the widespread implementation of patient-facing health information technology because they lack access or ability to use the internet.
[ More ]
Peter Polack, Medical Practice Trends
“What is the quickest way to figure out how to use a new electronic device? Read the manual? No – hand it to a child and let them play with it for a few minutes and show you how it works. But the converse is true as well: if you hand it to an older person and expect them to use it without proper planning, you may be asking for trouble.
[ More ]
Howard Anderson, Healthcare Info Security
“The latest component of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ ongoing effort to protect medical devices from malware is the creation of a centralized patch management system, says Randy Ledsome, the VA’s acting director of field security operations.
[ More ]
Ano Lobb, EHR Bloggers
“Introducing an Emergency Department Information System (EDIS), essentially an electronic health record (EHR) specifically designed for the ED setting, is the subject of an interesting new paper in the International Journal of Medical Informatics. Even if your practice or interests are in a different specialty, field, or clinical setting, the article reveals many relevant learning points.
[ More ]
John, EMR Thoughts
“I think he makes a good point about it possibly being too early to really know how many cloud based SaaS EHR companies are going to have breaches. I also think it’s fair to consider that when those do happen, they’re going to be big breaches. They won’t just be a few records that are breached, but a whole bunch. Although, this is true for any electronic medical record HIPAA breach as compared with a paper chart HIPAA breach.
[ More ]
Frank Irving, EHRWatch
“On June 20, the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), formally launched MedlinePlus Connect. The free service allows health organizations and health information technology providers to link patient portals and EHR systems to MedlinePlus.gov, an online source of health information.
[ More ]
Jyoti M., NextBio's Blog
“Going paperless with patient records could benefit more than just the trees, according to a new study published in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Based entirely on electronic medical records, the research finds an intriguing association between higher blood glucose levels and combining prescriptions for two drugs, pravastatin and paroxetine.
[ More ]
Pamela Lewis Dolan, amednews
“Electronic medical record vendors are taking steps to ensure not only that their products have all the bells and whistles required under meaningful use rules, but also that the products are easy for physicians to use.
[ More ]
Kevin Pho, KevinMD
“I’ve heard that a few academic medical centers, the identities which I will keep anonymous, are advising incoming medical residents to stay off social media. Meaning, they have to close their blogs, and shutter their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
[ More ]
Thomas McMennamin, EHR Bloggers
“No matter how you slice it, Meaningful Use is challenging. Despite strong financial incentives, achieving Meaningful Use will take the time and attention of doctors to track their progress against requirements and attest to their compliance. I recently chatted with an REC who was very surprised that vendors aren’t doing more.
[ More ]
Andy Choi, azorobotics
“The neonatologist team at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have investigated the use of the remote-controlled, robotic telemedicine in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and have submitted a report that indicates that the system is safe to use.
[ More ]
John Pulley, NextGov
“The “meaningful use” standards used by the federal government to measure the quality of electronic health record systems don’t necessarily translate into real-world usability, and that needs to change, the nation’s health IT czar says.
[ More ]
Lodewijk Bos, ICMCC
“During an ICMCC board dinner early 2005, Prof. Swamy Laxminarayan and I realized that the best way to solve the problem of unvalidated information on the internet was to link information from an EHR to health information platforms created by professional, reliable sources. The trick to do this was to base both the EHR and the information platform on the same coding/ontology standards like SNOMED, ICD and LOINC.
[ More ]
Business Wire
“The National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has formally launched MedlinePlus Connect. This free service allows health organizations and health information technology (HIT) providers to link patient portals and electronic health record (EHR) systems to MedlinePlus.gov, a trusted source of authoritative, up-to-date health information for patients, families and health care providers. MedlinePlus brings together information from NIH, other federal agencies, and reputable health information providers. MedlinePlus covers a wide range of health conditions and wellness issues, and includes key resources to inform patients about their health.
[ More ]
Margalit Gur-Arie, On Healthcare Technology
“A brand new EMR is being rolled out in a midsize hospital. The EMR is exclusively based on touchscreen technology, with devices strategically placed on the floor. It provides concurrent access to medical records for all team members (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, radiologists, dieticians, secretaries) wherever they may be. Patients are also accessing the EMR. They enter their own histories and describe symptoms in detail through the same touchscreen devices. This patient-centered EMR, built by a team of clinicians and technologists working together, is taking a huge step forward in Clinical Decision Support (CDS).
[ More ]
