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August 23, 2011 | MollyMerrill, Associate Editor
TUCSON, AZ –Children's Clinics for Rehabilitative Services in Southern Arizona is usingfingerprint biometrics to increase access to – and the security of – its newelectronic health record system.
Officials said thenew technology was the result of Children's Clinics recent transition to aNextGen ambulatory EHR after years of using paper charts.
Officials said theybecame challenged with managing login credentials, especially given that 40percent of the clinic's staff are part-time contract providers who only work inthe clinic a couple of times a month. In order to improve workflow, officialsdecided to deploy technology from Redwood City, Calif-based DigitalPersona,Inc.
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HDMBreaking News, August 25, 2011
The Office of theNational Coordinator for Health Information Technology is seeking publiccomment on a draft plan to provide equal access for all Americans to thebenefits of health I.T.
Worried of a newtype of "digital divide," then-national coordinator David Blumenthal,M.D., in October 2010 called on electronic health records vendors to ensuretheir sales and marketing activities include providers serving minoritycommunities. Under the draft plan now soliciting comment, "the governmentwill endeavor to assure that underserved and at-risk individuals enjoy thesebenefits to the same extent as all other citizens," according to a newposting on ONC's HealthITBuzz blog.
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Writtenby Sabrina Rodak | August 24, 2011
Researchers studiedthe Primary Care Information Project, a New York City initiative designed toimprove population health that helped implement EHRs in more than 300 primarycare practices.
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Thursday, August 25, 2011
byBrian Ahier
The need for robusthealth information exchange (HIE) continues to grow, and not just because it isa part of the meaningful use incentive program. Having infrastructure tosupport HIE will be a critical component to enable new payment and caredelivery models like accountable care organizations and medical homes.
Backgroundon HIE Efforts
There has been astrong national effort in developing the Nationwide Health Information Network(NwHIN), as well as a dramatic increase in local and regional efforts to createviable health information exchange organizations (HIOs). These efforts includethe Direct Project, which created asimple, secure, scalable, standards-based way for participants to sendauthenticated, encrypted health information directly to known, trustedrecipients over the Internet. The Direct Project -- which was sponsored by theOffice of the National Coordinator for Health IT -- has become an importanton-ramp to the health information superhighway. -----
Current users andpotential purchasers of electronic health record (EHR) software recognize thevalue of using EHRs, but the high cost is causing nearly one-third ofphysicians to hesitate from taking the plunge, according to a recently releasedsurvey by Sage Healthcare Division.
The survey,published August 10, found that while 77 percent of all respondents saw theease of use and speediness of an EHR, 32 percent of medical practices who arein the market for the technology remain stymied by the capitalinvestment.
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August 25, 2011 | BernieMonegain, Editor
WASHINGTON – TheDepartment of Health and Human Services on Thursday awarded $137 million tonearly every state to strengthen prevention efforts and to improve publichealth. Many of the awards include a health IT component, such as immunizationinformation technologies and registries.
"More thanever, it is important to help states fight disease and protect publichealth," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "These awards are animportant investment and will enable states and communities to help Americansquit smoking, get immunized and prevent disease and illness before theystart."
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As more providersadopt electronic medical record systems, expect to see more disputes betweencompeting vendors protecting their turf, as well as access issues betweenvendors and their provider clients. In the latest salvo, urology EMR vendorMeridianEMR has sued rival Intuitive Medical Software and one of Meridian'scustomers, for "malicious interference with and conversion of Meridian'sconfidential and proprietary information."
According to a lawsuit,filed June 16 in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey,Intuitive, which offers an EMR system called UroChart, sought to unlawfullydecipher Meridian's encrypted software to gain an unfair competitive advantage.Meridian claims that Shappley Clinic, a urology practice based in Germantown, Tenn.,unlawfully provided Intuitive with access to a computer server that Meridianhad installed at Shappley, and that a "clone" server was createdcontaining Meridian's confidential information. -----
While electronichealth records generally are touted as being able to save money for theproviders implementing such systems, one has been quite successful in savingmoney for taxpayers in Texas, as well.
A statewide EMRdeveloped by Atlanta-based Business Computer Applications, Inc. (BCA), combinedwith a telemedicine system from the University of Texas Medical Branch andTexas Tech University, successfully improved health outcomes for prisonerswhile reducing overall costs, leading to $1 billion in savings over the last 10years for the state's taxpayers, according to IT research firm GartnerGroup.
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Legislators demandanswers after a security researcher remotely controlled his own insulin pumpusing a $20 radio frequency transmitter at Black Hat.
August 23, 2011
Two members of Congresshave asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the FederalCommunications Commission's approach to medical devices with wirelesscapabilities to ensure that the devices are "safe, reliable, andsecure."
The letter to the GAO, fromReps. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.)--both members ofthe House communications and technology subcommittee--was sparked by a medical device hackingdemonstration earlier this month at the Black Hatconference in Las Vegas. While most BlackHat presentations typically detail exploits launchedagainst others or more benign forms of hardware hacking, securityresearcher Jerome Radcliffe actually hacked--live and onstage--his own insulinpump, which he relies on to subcutaneously administer multiple doses of insulinper day. Radcliffe, 33, said he was diagnosed with diabetes at age 22. -----
August 22, 2011
TMCnet Contributor
mobileStorm, a LosAngeles, California-based provider of e-mail and mobilemessaging solutions, announced the release of a new guide that presents adetailed guidance for making healthcare mobile. The new guidetitled, "Making Healthcare Mobile" explains how healthcare can beextended into the mobile realm through a detailed, step-by-step lessons.
mobileStorm,according to company officials, is the first technology company to launch afully HIPAA compliant mobile messaging platform that can be incorporated intoany smart phone app.
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August 18, 2011 | MikeMiliard, Managing Editor
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA –Just three weeks after its iPad-native EHR made news for gainingONC-ATCB-certification, drchrono has launched an iOS app to replace paper-basedpatient check-in.
Company execs saythe OnPatient app can be downloaded to the iPad for free and integrated into amedical practice as a standalone application – the patient check-in softwarealso integrates with with the drchrono's iPad EHR.
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HDMBreaking News, August 22, 2011
The ElectronicHealthcare Network Accreditation Commission has introduced a new program foraccrediting vendors of health information exchange services. The initiativecomplement's industry sponsored EHNAC's launch in 2010 of an accreditationprogram for health information exchanges.
The new HIE servicesprogram will accredit vendors that provide clinical health information exchangetechnology to HIEs and meet certain performance benchmarks in such areas asprivacy and security, technical performance, business practices andorganizational resources.
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22 August2011 Shanna Crispin
Primary caresoftware provider EMIS has apologised “profusely” and launched a formalinvestigation after its data centre failed last week.
The initial outageon Thursday morning was caused by hardware problems. From about 8:30am, 333 GPpractices across England experienced "performance and stabilityissues".
The problems thenhad knock-on effects. As a result, just before midday a further 446GP practices started experiencing issues with their systems.
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SectionHealth | Published on 24 Aug 2011 A monitor that willwarn doctors and families if a diabetes patient is in danger of an attack isbeing developed in Wales.
The system willhave the capability to be adapted for other chronic conditions, such ascoronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and asthma.
Diabetic patientswith low blood glucose can become unconscious due to hypoglycaemia and thereare many reported incidents where patients, who either live or work alone,fainted without the notice of others and such occurrence can often be fatal.
A multi-functionalmonitoring system is important to manage the glucose level of diabetic patientsand to provide warning when the patient is unconscious.
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European Commission |Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The BIOP@ASS teamsays the technologies developed as part of the project will also cutadministrative expenses, boost the level of security of future electronic ID cards andpassports, speed up data transfer between ID document and reader device, andmake it easier for users to use electronic services. The electronic ID cardsare based on the European Citizenship Card (ECC) family of standards, and thenext generation of electronic passports and residence permits. The ECC, inparticular, combines the benefits of standardisation with the added flexibilityof being able to adopt national requirements. The objectives ofthe BIOP@ASS project were the development of advanced (microelectronics andembedded software) secure and interoperable smart card platforms for requirede-administrative applications requested at the European level: e-identity,e-health, and residence permits. The project was grounded on the results of theformer MEDEA+ project called ONOM@TOPIC+; it provided a full technical platformand framework enabling European governments to issue interoperable documents orelectronic identification or authentication and access to e-services.
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Researchersuse natural language processing to flag postsurgical complications inphysicians' notes.
ByEmily Singer
Despite billions of dollars in incentives to support theadoption of electronic medical records, evidence that these systems improve theefficiency or quality of care has been scarce. But a new study shows thatnatural-language processing—a branch of computer science that employslinguistics to analyze regular speech—may greatly increase the utility of theserecords in improving care. Researchers usedthis approach to sift through physicians' notes, the richest and mostcomplicated aspect of electronic medical records, for postsurgicalcomplications such as pneumonia and sepsis. The method proved considerably moreaccurate than other automated systems. They say similar approaches could beused for a variety of applications, including predicting which patients are atrisk, and developing automated tools that help doctors choose treatments.
"You canfinally see how clinical data can be used to measure patient safety moresystematically, and that we will really be able to use these things to managecare," says Ashish Jha, a physician atHarvard Medical School who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. The paperand editorial were published this week in Journal of the AmericanMedical Association. -----
NaturalLanguage Processing Improves Complication Tracking
August 23, 2011 —Analysis of electronic medical records (EMRs) with natural language processingshows an improved ability to identify postoperative surgical complicationscompared with the standard method of relying on administrative data codes,according to a new study published in theAugust 24/31 issue of JAMA. In efforts toimprove patient safety, hospital administrative data are typically screened forcodes that may reflect potential adverse events during hospitalization, and aquality surveillance tool developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research andQuality has refined that process to focus on a set of 20 patient safetyindicators used in screening the data.
However, the systemhas some drawbacks, including some uncertainty about the validity ofadministrative codes and the inability of discharge codes to distinguishwhether a disease existed before a patient's admission or was acquired duringhospitalization, according to Harvey J. Murff, MD, MPH, lead author of thestudy from Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Veterans Affairs Medical Center,and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, and colleagues.
The emergence ofEMRs, combined with the development of automated systems such as naturallanguage processing, however, allows for screening of more extensive medicaldata and documents and extraction of specific medical concepts, as opposed tosimply searching for potentially unreliable discharge codes.
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Gienna Shaw, forHealthLeaders Media, August 23, 2011
RFID tags have fora while been used mainly for things—to keep track of the number of bandagesleft in the supply closet or to keep an expensive piece of equipment fromwalking out the door, for example. Increasingly, though, those badges areshowing up on the lapels of patients. And hospitals are using the data thoseRFID badges gather to improve patient flow, shorten length of stay, and more.
Wilmington,DE–based Christiana Care Health System pins patients with RFID tags to tracktheir movements throughout the continuum of care. The collected data is an"extremely powerful" tool for process improvement, says Linda Laskowski-Jones,vice president of emergency and trauma services for the two-hospital system.
The system tracksinterval-level data—measuring the time a patient spends in between eachactivity—from the time they see a doctor to the time the doctor orders labs oran x-ray, for example.
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By Joseph Conn
Bruce Friedman, in a post on LabSoft News says, "Epic has achieved a nearmonopoly of the (electronic health-record systems) installed in the largestU.S. hospitals." And writing in the WashingtonExaminer, Lachlan Markay, an investigative writer with the conservativeHeritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, reveals that EpicSystems Corp. CEO Judith Faulkner not only has madecampaign contributions to Democrats but also has served as a member of thefederal Health Information Technology Policy Committee, which "holds inits hands the future of health information technology policy." Well, Epic is on aroll. But market share is measurable, so I spoke with Jason Hess, generalmanager of clinical research with health IT market watcher Klas Enterprises ofOrem, Utah. Hess shared with me data from his company's latest survey of 1,467U.S. hospitals and 151 Canadian hospitals with 200 or more beds.
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17 August2011 Shanna Crispin
Yet another reviewis being carried out into the viability of the HealthSpace organiser, whichgives patients access to their Summary Care Record if it exists and they havean ‘advanced’ account.
Figures obtained byeHealth Insider show that the number of people using the NHS service to accesstheir SCR has fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year.
In February, 60patients a month were using an advanced HealthSpace account to see theirrecord, but this has now fallen to just 25 a month.
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Posted By BrandonGlenn On August 19, 2011 @ 12:02 am
What started out asa whim by a couple of software engineers led to a big breakthrough for MIMSoftware.
In early 2008,MIM’s developers began hammering out the initial lines of code to what threeyears later became the first-ever medical imagingmobile app [1] to be cleared for sale bythe U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “It wasn’t part ofour business plan. It just happened,” said Chief Technology Officer Mark Cain.“Two of our employees began writing the code just to see if they could do”
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Integration ofelectronic health record with social network app helps kidney transplantpatients stay on their medication schedules.
August 17, 2011
The University of IowaChildren's Hospital is getting ready to launch a Facebook page that willmonitor teenage and young adult kidney transplant patients in an effort to getthem to take their medications on time. The hospital will use prescriptioninformation from its electronic health record (EHR) system to populate the sitewith the list of medicines each patient is taking, and how many times dailythey should be taken.
The initiative,which is been developed by Dr. Patrick Brophy, director of the division ofpediatric nephrology, dialysis, and transplantation, along with the hospital'stechnology department, was borne out of Brophy's frustration that many of histeenage kidney transplant patients were not taking their medications aftersurgery.
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Monday, August 22, 2011
byHelen Pfister and Susan Ingargiola, Manatt Health Solutions
Given the valuethat individuals place on the privacy of their health information, it is notsurprising that there is a federal advisory committee charged with helping theOffice of the National Coordinator for Health IT protect the privacy andsecurity of health information exchanged through electronic health recordsunder the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. This group -- asubcommittee of the Health IT Policy Committee -- is the aptly named privacyand security "Tiger Team."
Backgroundon the Privacy and Security Tiger Team
ONC first assembledthe Tiger Team in June 2010. The group includes15 members from the Health IT Policy Committee, theHealth IT Standards Committee and the National Committee on Vital and HealthStatistics. As a matter ofscope, the Tiger Team develops privacy and security recommendations forelectronic HIE, in which health care providers must engage to demonstratemeaningful use of EHRs under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs.Generally speaking, this includes electronic exchange for the purposes of treatment,care coordination, and quality and public health reporting.
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Privacy andcommunications issues surround planned pilot testing of cloud-based tools bythe Department of Veterans Affairs that could impact as many as 134,000 VAmedical workers. Specifically, the VA wants to move its MicrosoftExchange-based collaboration system to a cloud-based system, according to InformationWeek.
The issues dateback to last December, FierceGovernmentITreportedlast month, when doctors and residents at several VAhospitals used GoogleDocs and Yahoo Calendar to manage their workflow. Bystoring patient information in each application, however, patient informationwas put at risk, according to Roger Baker, the VA's chief informationofficer. -----
While HIMSS12 isn'texactly around the corner, it's not too early to start anticipating some of thekey trends that will emerge at the 2012 Vegas-bound conference, which takesplace Feb. 20-24.
Social media, andits impact on hospitals and providers, certainly will play a prominentrole, given HIMSS' recent announcement that Twitter co-founderBiz Stone will be a keynote speaker. Already,we're seeing that hospital marketing, patient satisfaction and patientengagement are intricately linked to social media. -----
Enjoy!
David.
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