Tom Groenfeldt, Forbes
“WellPoint and IBM are working with oncology experts at the Cedars Sinai Cancer Institute in Los Angeles to educate Watson as a physician’s assistant. Watson, an IBM computing system proved on Jeopardy! that a computer can collect and understand vast amounts of information and provide answers.
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Paul Cerrato, InformationWeek
“Have you ever read something that sent chills up your spine? An old ad from Apple did it for me.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes… While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius… Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
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Marla Durben Hirsch, FierceEMR
“Electronic health records can do more than identify which patients should be receiving preventive and other additional services. They can also help providers pinpoint who shouldn’t receive care.
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Mathias JS et al, J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2012
Background
National organizations historically focused on increasing use of effective services are now attempting to identify and discourage use of low-value services. Electronic health records (EHRs) could be used to measure use of low-value services, but few studies have examined this. The aim of the study was to: (1) determine if EHR data can be used to identify women eligible for an extended Pap testing interval; (2) determine the proportion of these women who received a Pap test sooner than recommended; and (3) assess the consequences of these low-value Pap tests.MethodsElectronic query of EHR data identified women aged 30-65 years old who were at low-risk of cervical cancer and therefore eligible for an extended Pap testing interval of 3 years (as per professional society guidelines). Manual chart review assessed query accuracy.
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Dan Bowman, FierceHealthIT
“Researchers have called the effectiveness of web-based interventions in healthcare into question on the heels of a study showing limited use of such features by patients, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Health Communication.
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Fleisher L et al, Journal of Health Communication, 17(1)
Given the extensive use of the Internet for health information, Web-based health promotion interventions are widely perceived as an effective communication channel. The authors conducted this study to determine use of a Web-based intervention intended to improve colorectal cancer screening in a population of women who are at average risk and noncompliant to current screening recommendations. The study was a randomized controlled trial designed to compare the effectiveness of colorectal cancer screening educational materials delivered using the Internet versus a printed format. In 3 years, 391 women seen for routine obstetrics/gynecology follow-up at 2 academic centers provided relevant survey information. Of these, 130 were randomized to the Web intervention.
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Neil Versel, InformationWeek
“Computer maker Dell is counting on the cloud, analytics, and “big data” to power the future of medicine and make healthcare more personal. The Texas-based hardware giant is putting the infrastructure in place to support electronic health records (EHR) and genomics on the journey from episodic care to coordinated care to personalized medicine.
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Rebecca Todd, e-Health Insider
“Algorithms designed to help the early detection of cancer may be integrated into GP IT systems.
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Karen Weintraub, The Boston Globe
“To see inside the digestive system, doctors have to thread a scope up or down – potentially doing damage along the way – or get their patients to swallow a capsule that tumbles through, uncontrolled, snapping random pictures.
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Claire Swedberg, RFID Journal
“The Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (MMCI), an oncology treatment facility located in the Czech Republic, is employing a Wi-Fi-based real-time location system (RTLS) to enable patients to gain quick assistance in the event of an emergency, and to make staff members more efficient by tracking the locations of medical devices and patients.
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e-Patient Dave, e-patients.net
“What a rocket ride it’s been for Xeni. Tuesday morning we reported on the BoingBoing co-editor’s unexpected breast cancer diagnosis 12/9, and her odyssey reading her scan data. (CDs didn’t come with software; in a few hours with Twitter help she’d downloaded OsiriX and was pushing her way through it.)
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Brian T. Horowitz, eWeek
“The next assignment for IBM’s Watson supercomputer is to evaluate treatments for cancer. Health insurer WellPoint, which is looking into real-life applications for Watson, has announced that a leading cancer institution in Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, will provide expertise to the company on developing applications based on IBM’s Watson data-analytics machine.
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Nicole Lewis, InformationWeek Healthcare
“As cancer researchers better understand the “panomics” of cancer–the “combination of genes, proteins, molecular pathways and unique patient characteristics that together drive the disease,” electronic health records (EHRs) can play a transformational role in cancer research. So concludes the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which calls for EHR vendors to implement standards to facilitate capturing, storing, and sharing this panomics-related data, with the goal of increasing cancer survival.
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TICBeat
“El fabricante de hardware Dell se ha involucrado en un proyecto de ayuda contra el neuroblastoma, una variedad de cáncer infantil, para el que está prestando su infraestructura de cloud computing.
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Doolittle GC et al, Telemedicine and e-Health, 17(9)
The teleoncology practice based at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) in Kansas City, Kansas, is one of the longest running practices of its kind worldwide. The practice began in 1995 and connected an oncologist at KUMC with a rural medical center in Hays, Kansas. Fifteen years later, the practice continues to thrive at Hays Medical Center and has also expanded to include two additional sites within the state-the Northeast Kansas Center for Health and Wellness in Horton and Goodland Regional Medical Center in Goodland-that offer regularly scheduled teleoncology clinics. While the KUMC practice has witnessed an expansion in service sites throughout its history, the practice has seen a significant decrease in the costs associated with providing such services since its inception.
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Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe
“Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have launched a massive study to test cancer patients’ tumors for hundreds of genetic aberrations in an effort to build a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of cancer and how to tailor patients’ treatment.
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John Moore, Chilmark Research
“Little over a month ago, IBM and WellPoint announced an agreement wherein WellPoint will deploy IBM’s latest and greatest super computer and artificial intelligence mega-mind Watson. Watson’s claim to fame was its ability to beat the human Jeopardy champions much like Big Blue beat reigning chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
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Frank Irving, EHRWatch
“Thanks to new PC-based software, patients living with cancer can track, organize document, monitor and share information associated with their illness, treatment and recovery.
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Nicole Lewis, InformationWeek Healthcare
“Breast-imaging reports prepared using a speech-recognition system are eight times more likely than conventional dictation transcription reports to contain major errors, according to a study of 615 such documents.
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Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
“Watson, IBM’s game-show-playing supercomputer, will soon be used to help physicians diagnose and treat cancer patients.
IBM announced earlier this year that healthcare would be the first commercial application for the computer, which defeated two human champions on the popular television game show Jeopardy! in February.
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