eHealthServer.com - New Project For and By International eHealth Community

“eHealthNews.EU Portal, a leading eHealth news web based platform with core competence and innovative strength in advancing the European eHealth Industry and Research domains, has launched a new project addressed to the International eHealth Community, named ‘eHealthServer.com’.”
Article
eHealthNews.eu, 10 November 2008

DOD portal centralizes health information

“The Defense Department has launched a new Web portal designed to help service members and their families find health information and programs available to them.
The www.WarriorCare.mil portal has links to health-related programs and resources offered by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, DOD and Veterans Affairs Department. The site also provides access to the Wounded Warrior Resource Center, which offers information and other resources, and the Compensation and Benefits Handbook for injured or seriously ill service members.”
Article
Colleen O’Hara, Government Health IT, 6 November 2008

iMedix: Reliable Health Search and Patient-to-patient Social Network

“The Internet is used by 75% of American adults to search for health or medical information online; 1 in 10 are searching for health information right now as you read this [1]. Indeed, the amount of information available on the Internet related to health and medicine is staggering. While much of it is credible, an equal or greater amount of misinformation also exists.”
Article
Highlight Health 2.0, 28 October 2008

Alberta first to offer medical information online

“Albertans will soon have their personal health information at their fingertips around the clock.
The province is set to become the first jurisdiction in Canada to allow residents to access the often sensitive and private information online.
The Progressive Conservative government plans to start slowly, at first offering only a bit of information such as vaccination records. However, the end goal is to post everything, including prescriptions, X-rays and laboratory test results.”
Article
Katherine O’Neill, Globe and Mail, 17 October 2008

Docs, patients to share info via custom EMR on Web portal

“Physicians and patients using the SwiftMD Web-based portal will be able to securely share medical information through a custom electronic medical records solution created in partnership with SSIMED, supplier of the EMRge Electronic Health Records system.”
Article
Chip Means, Healthcare IT News, 15 October 2008

Whose Record Is It Anyway? Putting Patients’ Interests at the Heart of the Implementation and Use of Electronic Medical Records

“With the dawn of electronic medical records (EMRs) and patient portals, there is an unprecedented opportunity to provide truly collaborative patient-centred care. These tools can promote communication between healthcare providers and patients, improve chronic disease management and enable patients to become active members in the healthcare delivery system, but only if the tools work for everyone involved - including patients. Without patient consultation and input, there will be limitations in the ways in which physicians and patients are able to capitalize on these tools. Decision-makers must begin to enact their commitment to collaborative patient-centred care by engaging patients in discussions related to EMR design, implementation and use.”
Abstract
Rebecca L. Mador, Nicola T. Shaw, Stephen Cheetham and Robert J. Reid, Electronic Healthcare, 7(2) 2008: 90-92

UK doctors demand IT for cross-border care

“The British Medical Association has called for a single web-portal to be created to provide European citizens with information on cross-border care.
In its response to the European Commission’s proposal for a directive on the application of patients’ rights to cross-border healthcare, the BMA, which represents UK doctors, says patients will need much more information than is being proposed at the moment to make their rights effective.”
Article
e-Health Europe, 11 September 2008

New Jersey HIE to share patients’ imaging records

“AmeriHealth New Jersey has launched a statewide pilot program that will allow physicians in New Jersey to share patients’ imaging records.
The new initiative, “New Jersey Health Information Exchange (NJHIE),” gives radiologists and other physicians 24-hour electronic access to shared-patient medical imaging records through a secure Web portal.”
Article
Molly Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 8 September 2008

N.C. health exchange launches portal-based EHR

“A North Carolina health information exchange has finished the first phase of an electronic health record project that lets physicians pull up patient data across more than a dozen hospitals.”|
Article
John Moore, Government Health IT, 5 September 2008

Personal Health Records: More portable, but few seek access from health providers

“Americans have the right to access and take ownership of their health records, yet few take advantage of it despite the increasing complexity and cost of health care.
Physicians, for their part, are wary of relying on records provided by patients.”
Article
Gary Gosselin, Michigan Business Review, 3 September 2008

e-health portal launched for Lithuania

“A new Lithuanian ehealth information website has been launched to keep health professionals and members of the public informed about the development of Lithuania’s National Electronic Health System (NESS).”
Article
e-Health Europe, 1 September 2008

The Emergence of the Patient Portal

“It stems to reason that most people would prefer to investigate their health concerns online before visiting a Physician. Studies indicate that these same people report that what they find online influences their treatment decisions. What’s clear that today’s patients are becoming better informed and more web savvy; increasingly seeking services that allow them to take an active role in managing their health.”
Article
Panteleon, Acumeme, 25 June 2008

Ziekenhuis stelt gegevens beschikbaar voor huisartsen

Dutch hospital makes patient data available to GPs.

Article (Dutch)
HuisArts Vandaag, 22 June 2008

The deployment of integrated care services for chronic patients (NEXES project)

“Abstract: The societal adaptations required for reducing the burden of chronic disorders and ageing have been recently framed by the WHO initiative on Innovative Care for Chronic Conditions. With this scenario in place, a successful deployment of innovative integrated care services to support healthier and independent living for chronic patients and elderly has emerged as an urgent unmet need. The NEXES project aims at undertaking the deployment of four integrated care programs addressing various aspects of chronic disorders selected because of promising outcomes generated by previous small-scale randomized controlled trials:

• Wellness-rehabilitation: Early diagnosis, promotion of healthy life-styles and patient self-management. Physical activity and cognitive aspects being main components
• Enhanced Care Support of unplanned hospitalizations
• Home hospitalization of patients with exacerbations
• Support: Transient remote support to diagnosis and/or treatment

The project focuses on the main factors modulating the success of an integrated care approach in delivering the services, namely: a) the co-morbidity challenge; b) articulation of healthcare and community services; c) organizational and educational issues; d) modularity, scalability and interoperability of the ICT platform, and, e) identification of business models ensuring service sustainability. Accordingly, the validation strategy prioritises the discovery of evidence supporting the extensive use of the services, applicable at the level of policy decision makers.
Technologically, the Linkcare platform (Linkcare eTEN 517435) sets the reference architecture. Modularity, flexibility and scalability are based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) using the IBM UML 2.0 Profile for Software Services. Briefly, the platform consist of a web-based application addressed to management of chronic patients and elderly, facilitating organizational interoperability following a distributed model. The following services are available at the moment: a) Health portal, b) Call centre service, c) Professional mobile access, d) Patient wireless monitoring service, e) Collaborative work service, f) Security modules, and g) Interoperability module with hospital information systems and shared electronic patient records. In the future, it will incorporate knowledge management applications and it is foreseen its evolution towards an IMS platform.”

Bárbara Vallespín, David Fonollosa, Albert Alonso, Josep Roca
Hospital Clinic de Barcelona. Villarroel, 170, 08036 Barcelona, Spain

To be presented at the ICMCC Event

The Health-EU Portal Celebrates its 2nd Anniversary

“The Health-EU portal is a gateway to health information in 20 languages. I hope it will soon become one of the first places where European citizens seek health information on the web. The information has to be clear, concise and relevant to their needs - providing the users with the tools and information they need to make informed healthy choices” says Robert Madelin, Director General for the Health and Consumers Directorate General of the European Commission.”
Article
eHealth News.eu, 14 May 2008

First patient portal launched in Estonia

“A Tallinn hospital has become the first in Estonia to introduce an ePatient portal, allowing patients to view their medical records online.
The iPatsient (ePatient) portal, began its pilot phase in November 2007 at East Tallinn Central Hospital and is now fully online for all patients to log onto.
To date, nearly 1,000 people have used the portal, and if it proves successful it will be rolled across Estonia as part of its e-health strategy.”
Article
e-Health Europe, 7 May 2008

Tectonic Shifts in the Health Information Economy

“In a recent shift in the health information landscape, large corporations are seeking an integral and transformative role in the management of health care information. The mechanism by which this transformation is likely to take place is through the creation of computer platforms that will enable patients to manage health data in personally controlled health records (PCHRs). Two types of large corporations are involved. Technology companies such as Google and Microsoft see business opportunities, whereas Fortune 100 companies in their role as employers securely store, access, augment, and share their own copy of electronic health information. Though this shift in the locus of control of health information is driven largely by a need to provide assistance with clinical care processes, it will also profoundly affect the biomedical research enterprise. We illustrate this shift with a two-part scenario in which a patient fills her PCHR with data from multiple sites of care and then participates in research.”
Article
Kenneth D. Mandl and Isaac S. Kohane, NEJM, Volume 358:1732-1737, April 17, 2008, Number 16

NEXES

NEXES project concerns the deployment of integrated care services for chronic patients based on structured interventions addressing prevention, healthcare and social support. Services are selected from positive outcomes of work done in previous EU projects and in collaboration with industrial partners. Innovation relies on the interplay of three factors: adoption of an integrative approach including profound organizational changes, facing the co-morbidity challenge and the use of ICT as modular and scalable tools supporting interoperability among actors. Two groups of target users are identified and addressed: on one side the citizens at risk, patients and care providers and on the other side Health and community professionals. The former ones are the beneficiaries and active users of the services, the latter ones provide services in their respective domains, but they are also beneficiaries since they receive input/support from reference professionals. The Linkcare platform (Linkcare eTEN 517435, 2005-07) sets the reference architecture. Modularity, flexibility and scalability are based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) using the IBM UML 2.0 Profile for Software Services. The ICT platform is a web-based application addressed to management of chronic patients and elderly, facilitating organizational interoperability following a distributed model. It will incorporate knowledge management applications and evolve to an IMS platform.

The list of main programs includes:

1. Wellness-rehabilitation: Early diagnosis, promotion of healthy life-styles and patient self-management. Physical activity and cognitive aspects being main components
2. Enhanced Care Support of unplanned hospitalizations
3. Home hospitalization of patients with exacerbations
4. Support: Transient remote support to diagnosis and/or treatment

The service portfolio includes:

a) Health portal
b) Call centre service
c) Professional mobile access
d) Patient wireless monitoring service
e) Collaborative work service
f) Security modules
g) Interoperability module with hospital information systems and shared electronic patient records.

To be presented at the ICMCC Event 2008.

MDs launch online tool for patients

“Doctors may soon be tracking patients with high blood pressure or asthma over the Internet using online tools launched yesterday by the Canadian Medical Association.
The web portal, called mydoctor.ca, is geared to help doctors and patients work more closely together, especially to manage chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. The secure portal also allows patients to input health information and lets them track their blood pressure, asthma and weight loss.”
Article
Megan Ogilvie, The Star, 2 April 2008

Improving Healthcare Services using Web Based Platform for Management of Medical Case Studies

Abstract:
The paper presents a web based platform for management of medical cases, support for healthcare specialists in taking the best clinical decision. Research has been oriented mostly on multimedia data management, classification algorithms for querying, retrieving and processing different medical data types (text and images). The medical case studies can be accessed by healthcare specialists and by students as anonymous case studies providing trust and confidentiality in Internet virtual environment. The MIDAS platform develops an intelligent framework to manage sets of medical data (text, static or dynamic images), in order to optimize the diagnosis and the decision process, which will reduce the medical errors and will increase the quality of medical act. MIDAS is an integrated project working on medical information retrieval from heterogeneous, distributed medical multimedia database.

Cristina OGESCUa, Claudiu PLAISANU^a, Florian UDRESCU^a, Silviu DUMITRU^b
aThe Company for Research, Development, Engineering and Manufacturing for Control Systems – IPA S.A, Bucharest, Romania
^bInstitute for Computers – ITC SA, Bucharest, Romania

To be published in “Medical and Care Compunetics 5″, IOSPress, 2008.
To be presented at the ICMCC Event 2008.

E-medicine: It has strong devotees, but privacy issues slow growth of valuable programs

“With the click of a computer mouse, Nashville businessman Doug Smith can see his personal health records, including medical lab results, and communicate by e-mail with his doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
That access came in handy recently when Smith saw a mention in radiology test results that indicated spots on his thyroid could be cancerous. He alerted his doctor, who had e-mailed him the report, and the proper treatment was started immediately.”
Article
Getahn Ward, The Tennessean, 16 March 2008

Partner Solution Microsoft Market Place - Health Care

“Microsoft has created a new site whereby potential clients can locate a health care partner by searching the site. There is still a bit more work to be done to provide a complete search in all health care verticals and partner solution areas. I did a quick search for medical records and the search results are returned as shown in the last image. You can filter the search to be as detailed as desired. This appears to be a potential good spot to begin to locate Microsoft Partners using Microsoft technologies. The page is very similar to the software marketplace for software vendors they have had in place for a few years, but this site focuses on MS Partners only with customer rankings.”
Article
Barbara Duck, The Medical Quack, 9 March 2008

Dedicated PACS Community is Launched for Radiology Professionals

“Medicexchange PLC (Subsidiary of MGT Capital Investments Inc, Amex: MGT) has launched a focussed Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) online community to highlight the most recent information on industrial news, research and clinical updates in this fascinating and fast developing field of radiology.”
Article
PRWeb, 9 March 2008

CSW North America Showcases Case Notes(TM) - the Next Generation, Patient-Centric Electronic Health Record System

“CSW North America today announced that it will showcase its patient-centric interoperable Electronic Health Record (EHR) system - Case Notes™ - at the HIMSS Annual Conference 2008 in Orlando, FL.
Case Notes is a proven, end-to-end EHR system that displays a single patient record across multiple care providers, empowering health professionals to deliver the best possible healthcare throughout a patient’s lifetime. Used by physicians, hospitals, labs, radiology centers, skilled nursing facilities and emergency departments, Case Notes seamlessly coordinates clinical processes and connects users across multiple care settings.”
Article
redOrbit, 19 February 2008

The First Web 2.0 Pharmaceutical News Portal

“World Pharma News project is launching a Web 2.0 pharmaceutical news platform, named as well World Pharma News but with attached ‘.net’ extension. Web 2.0 generally represents knowledge-oriented social-networking platforms focused first of all on collaborative approaches.”
Article
eHealth News.EU, 2 February 2008

E-medical records save money, time in Ann Arbor

“The Ann Arbor Area Health Information Exchange is accomplishing what many voluntary consortiums of independent medical groups have only dreamed of doing: earning pay-for-performance dollars and improving patient outcomes by sharing clinical and administrative data in electronic medical record systems.”
Article
Jay Greene, Crain’s Detroit Business, 21 January 2008

The Electronic Gateway

“It is 7 o’clock in the morning and an outpatient nurse in the clinic has just opened the electronic health record (EHR) at her nursing station after checking the schedule of patients for the day. The nurse knows that it will be a busy day with patients darting in and out of the clinic. In addition, she will need to assist with refill requests along with any other questions that patients might have during the day.
As part of her daily morning routine, she checks the inbox in the EHR and notices a multitude of new messages ranging from appointment requests to refills to simple questions, as well as messages from the providers approving the prescription refills. With one click, she can fax the approved refills to the local pharmacy without printing anything; she can also initiate a message to inform the patient of the refill.”
Article
Hector L. Santiago, Advance for LPNs, 14 January 2008

Canadian IT agency signs deal for discounted online physician portal

“Canada Health Infoway has negotiated preferential conditions and pricing for an online portal for Canadian physicians. The agreement is expected to accelerate the implementation of electronic health records in Canada.”
Article
Richard Pizzi, Healthcare IT News, 15 January 2008

IT helps in the fight against hypertension

“The American Society of Hypertension, or ASH, is poised to roll out a physician collaboration portal that makes it possible for physicians to share patient information. ASH expects the new portal will help grow its National Hypertension and Cardiovascular Risk Factor Registry.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 14 January 2008

Patient AND Family Centered, using the PHR to connect with everyone

“I reconnected with Bev Johnson and Marie Abraham this week, from the Institute for Family Centered Care, in Bethesda, MD. They are embarking on some exciting projects (in my opinion), which includes supporting the implementation of a patient Web portal at Medical College of Georgia, an institution that has been well described in the patient-centered care literature.”
Article
Ted Eytan, PCHIT, 9 January 2008