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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Informatics: The Future
From the report: "There is a seismic shift in the way information can improve the experience, quality and outcomes of health and care services. Quality information will empower patients and other service users. It will enable a culture of shared decision-making – ‘no decision about me without me’ – and it will help us all to make more informed choices about the way we live our lives.
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What's the sense of having IT systems in place that can help cut medical costs if physicians ignore the price tag of the care they provide?
Ever ask your family doctor how much the test she just ordered will cost? Chances are she doesn't know. Physicians have been trained to provide the best possible care and to order whatever procedures they deem necessary to diagnose and treatment disease, regardless of the cost.
That philosophy is consistent with the Hippocratic oath, but as the nation tries to cope with its runaway medical tab, that philosophy requires close scrutiny. And it's especially important given all the IT systems in place that can help contain medical costs. 
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July 17, 2012 | By Dan Bowman
Apple's iPad is just as accurate as a DICOM calibrated secondary-class monitor for reviewing MRI images, according to research featured in the August edition of the journal Academic Radiology.
For the study, 13 American Board of Radiology board-certified radiologists examined 31 cases on both devices. Thirteen of the cases contained one of four presentations: spinal cord compression, cauda equine syndrome, spinal cord hemorrhage, or spinal cord edema. The remaining 18 cases served as controls.
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By Patty Enrado, Special Projects Editor
Created 07/20/2012
ROHNERT PARK, CA – California’s statewide health information exchange (HIE) is in transition again. But by the end of 2012, 75 percent of the Golden State’s counties will either have community-based operating HIEs or will be in the planning stages, according to the recently appointed state official tasked with taking over the program.
“Our mission has changed,” Pamela Lane, Deputy Secretary of Health Information Exchange for the California Health and Human Services Agency, told attendees at the sixth annual Redwood MedNet Conference – Connecting California to Improve Patient Care 2012. “We are about the business of HIE. We are not in state government to say no; we are there to get the barriers out of the way.”
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JUL 19, 2012 3:28pm ET
Health care survey and analytics firm WorldOne has acquired online physician network operator Sermo for an undisclosed sum.
WorldOne is a survey and analytics firm offering pharmaceutical firms and other health care businesses access to an online panel of 1.7 million physicians, health care professionals and consumers, including more than 1 million physicians in 80 nations.
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By Robert Rowley, MD, Healthcare and health IT consultant, practicing family physician
The number of vendors of Electronic Health Records products seems unsustainable. Stimulated by federal Meaningful Use incentives, plus the irresistible tide of pressures and encouragement from all sides (specialty societies, peers, licensing boards, insurance payers), the uptake of EHRs has been steadily increasing.
As a result, large established EHR companies, some of whom have been around for 15 years or more, are experiencing competition from a wave of smaller start-ups – some successful, others not. Two general categories of EHRs have emerged, rather distinctly: EHRs for ambulatory use, and EHRs for hospital use. These really do represent two different markets.
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July 18, 2012 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
Physicians are adopting electronic health record systems and other health technology, but perhaps not as fast as the government would like, according to Physician Practice's 2012 technology survey.
According to the survey of 1,356 practices, a majority of independent practices (54 percent) reported that they have adopted an EHR. A slightly higher percentage (57.6 percent) said that their implementation is complete and that the system is being used. Less than a third (30 percent) said they are using patient portals, while more than 33 percent said they planned on joining a health information exchange for the sharing of data.
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July 18, 2012 | By Marla Durben Hirsch
One of the biggest problems for those who use or are considering adopting electronic health records is that the information out there can be very unreliable. It is becoming exceedingly difficult to accurately gauge what's occurring in the industry.
Just look at the spin accompanying some of the findings released this week.
In the wake of the report--a follow-up analysis of a supplement to the 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) of office-based providers--National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari posted in a blog post that the physicians' experiences have been "largely positive."
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July 19, 2012 | By Dan Bowman
Humanizing decision-support computer aids for patients helps to increase trust of such tools, according to new research out of Clemson University.
Design and look of an aid are important, according to Clemson psychology associate professor Richard Pak, who found that, for instance, adding an image of a person to an electronic support tool "significantly alters [patient] perceptions" for the better. As a result, decision-making reaction time of patients becomes quicker.
"A plausible explanation is that the increase in trust led to an increased dependence on the aid, which led to faster performance," Pak said, according to a university announcement.
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By Ari Berman
July 16, 2012 | Inside the Box | Sharing scientific data is as fundamental to the progression of science as the research design itself. Without data sharing, experiments cannot be peer-reviewed, and scientists cannot perpetuate existing findings by taking the next steps in the laboratory.
Unfortunately, data sharing is becoming more and more difficult. Compare scientific papers published in the early 90’s to those published in 2012 -- the differences are striking. Back then, any and all data associated with a project could fit in a figure or two, so the paper itself was the point of data sharing. Today, more and more papers are published with reams of supplementary data, e.g. PDF tables can reach hundreds of pages and are themselves a distilled and reduced version of the original data. (New initiatives such as the journal GigaScience and its associated database should help address this issue.) This illustrates the crux of the issue: modern research produces tons of data and publications are no longer a viable medium for sharing all those data.
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By Erin McCann, Associate Editor
Created 07/18/2012
WASHINGTON – U.S. News & World Report on Tuesday published its 2012 list of the Most Connected Hospitals. The list includes 156 U.S. hospitals nationwide, ranked according to their advancement in electronic medical record (EMR) adoption.
Over the past few years, the EMR has become part of the daily routine of medical professionals throughout the country. The promise of the EMR is often widely lauded among those in the healthcare profession. Some experts say the technology could prove to make the delivery of healthcare safer and more efficient in addition to providing healthcare providers and patients with better access to health data.
The federal government, through its incentive payments to physicians and hospitals that demonstrate meaningful use of EMRs, has played a central role in spurring the technology's adoption. A burgeoning number of hospitals have embraced EMRs beyond the government benchmarks.
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By Tom Sullivan, Government Health IT
Created 07/17/2012
Healthcare pays more than any other industry for information technology. At least according to a new survey.
"Our analysis shows healthcare organizations pay an average 17 percent more than that of the other 29 industries we sampled," write the authors of a paper by Net(net), which bills itself as a consultancy specializing in IT optimization, "and 33 percent more than the industry with the lowest average costs (food service).”
And that reality spans the gamut of IT, including financial applications, Microsoft desktop productivity licenses, networking equipment, servers, storage – even vertical applications specifically for healthcare from vendors including Epic, McKesson and Cerner.
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The haematology unit at Bart’s Health NHS Trust has embraced electronic working with Cerner Millennium. Rebecca Todd took a look at the electronic patient record system in action.
11 July 2012
In some hospitals, it is piled high in reception areas or being ferried across carparks in shopping trollies, but here there is not a scrap of paper in sight.
I feel a little like an interloper with my reporter’s notebook and pen in hand, as I head down the sparse corridors of the unit to meet the health professionals that have overseen this digital transformation.
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By Steff Deschenes, New Media Producer
Created 07/16/2012
Telemedicine and mHealth have the potential to help the healthcare system meet the Institute of Healthcare Improvement's triple aim to simultaneously increase the quality of care, improve the health of populations and reduce the per capita cost of care.
"Collectively, investments in telemedicine and mHealth have great potential to reduce healthcare system costs," said Adam C. Powell, president of Payer+Provider Syndicate, a consulting firm that uses techniques from health services research to bring about change in the health insurance and hospital industries.
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Posted: July 17, 2012 - 6:45 pm ET
About 55% of office-based physicians responding to a government-sponsored survey said they use some form of electronic health-record system, and by and large, they're a satisfied lot, according to a report on the survey.
The overwhelming majority (85%) of those who said they use an EHR also indicated that they were either very satisfied (38%) or somewhat satisfied (47%) with their systems. More than 7 in 10 said they were happy enough with their selection that they would purchase the same EHR system again. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics conducted the nationwide survey last year; findings were discussed in an HHS news release and on the CDC's website on Tuesday.
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July 16, 2012
According to research from the San Jose, Calif.-based Global Industry Analysts (GIA), the computerized physician order entry market is poised for tremendous growth over the coming year. The report, titled “Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) Systems: A Global Strategic Business Report,” says by 2018, the global market for CPOE systems will be valued at $1.5 billion. GIA says factors in this growth include the rising inclination towards patient safety, the acceptance of IT solutions in healthcare, and the growing use of EHRs.
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Within 20 months of signing a contract to provide Scotland with a patient management system, InterSystems had gone live with its TrakCare product in five health boards. Rebecca Todd reports.
5 July 2012
Scotland has been quietly getting on with what must count as one of the largest NHS IT deployments ever seen: the roll-out of InterSystems TrakCare to five NHS boards.
The project started when the five boards (Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Arran, Borders and Grampian) formed a consortium in January 2008 to procure a new Patient Management System for Scotland.
After an 18-month procurement process, InterSystems won. It went on to build a country edition of TrakCare for Scotland with the common functionality and processes required by all the boards, which reduced the need for localisation on each deployment.
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13 July 2012 Rebecca Todd
The accelerated roll out of EMIS Web has reached 747 GP practices and thousands of practices are in the familiarisation process.
EMIS Group today released a trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2012.
It shows that during the first half of the year, the roll-out of EMIS Web accelerated dramatically, with 121 practices moved onto the new system last month.
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16 July 2012 Fiona Barr
The NHS Commissioning Board has set out plans to complete its employment of 4,000 staff by January 2013.
The vast majority will be transferred from primary care trusts, strategic health authorities and arms’ length bodies.
A further 7,000 NHS staff are expected to be employed by 23 commissioning support services, which are due to be authorised by the end of the year.
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Despite rising adoption of tablets and smartphones, a survey shows three in four doctors use a desk computer for practice management tasks.
More people are turning to computer tablets and other new forms of technology, but pediatric hospitalist Rishi Agrawal, MD, MPH, favors a desktop computer for doing his job.
It’s not that he’s a technophobe. It’s that using the desktop makes more sense to him: He can easily and quickly access the hospital’s electronic health record system. The computer has a large monitor that allows for multitasking, and it’s secure.
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By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Created 07/16/2012
LONDON – A growing senior demographic, combined with other economic, social and technological developments, are driving investment and demand for home monitoring devices that can extend and improve in-home care, says a recent study from ABI research.
As the market transitions from safety-focused offerings toward health monitoring and extending and enhancing the comfort, safety and well-being for seniors living in their own homes and care homes, monitoring devices will grow to more than 36 million units in 2017, up from under 3 million units in 2011 – a compound annual growth rate of 55.9 percent.
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Posted: July 16, 2012 - 2:45 pm ET
The Joint Commission has an online guide for critical-access hospitals that use unlicensed scribes to help physicians and other licensed healthcare professionals document patient encounters in an electronic health-record system.
The guide is presented as a list of frequently asked questions and is contained in the Joint Commission's comprehensive accreditation manual for critical-access hospitals.
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Written by Jaimie Oh | July 16, 2012
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a new handbook that offers practical guidance on the implementation of interactive preventive health records.
In an article published in the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers found that patients who used IPHRs were more likely to be up-to-date on all preventive services compared with nonusers, especially in the areas of screening tests and immunizations.
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Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , July 17, 2012
If there's one thing I've learned in writing about healthcare and technology, it's that the learning never stops.
The pace of medicine, technology, regulation and business is non-stop. Watershed developments can occur weekly.
For instance, last week I learned that doctors at Orlando Health are now using software on iPads to remotely control Polycom video cameras (with startling clarity) to zoom in on the eyes of potential stroke victims. The doctors can be anywhere on the planet..
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By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Created 07/13/2012
WASHINGTON – The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced on July 12 guidance for reporting laboratory results using Direct Project specifications.
ONC officials said the guidance was developed by the Direct Laboratory Reporting Workgroup to address the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) requirements for the reporting of clinical laboratory results using Direct Project standards and specifications.
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July 16, 2012 | By Susan D. Hall
New tools developed by the National Cancer Institute will allow any researcher to compare data from large collections of genomic information against thousands of drugs to find the most effective treatments for cancer, according to a study published at Cancer Research.
The software, called CellMiner, was built for use with NCI-60, the institute's massive collection of cancer cell samples used to test potential anti-cancer drugs. The free tools provide access to the 22,379 genes catalogued in the NCI-60 and to 20,503 previously analyzed chemical compounds, including 102 U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs.
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July 16, 2012 | By Ken Terry
As the Meaningful Use Work Group of the Health IT Policy Committee prepares its recommendations for Meaningful Use Stage 3, its members should take a long hard look at the difference between the potential and the reality of health IT. If they ask for too much, many providers will be unable to keep up, and there will be pushback. If they ask for too little, many providers will be content to do the minimum required for incentives without using technology's full potential to improve quality of care.
While much has been achieved in a relatively short period of time, physicians and hospitals are making uneven progress toward the long-term goal of a fully digital, connected healthcare world. More than 100,000 providers have attested to Meaningful Use, but that doesn't mean they're all using their EHRs meaningfully.
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University degrees and certificate training both are valuable, but you must think strategically when choosing between them.
There's no end to the debate about the best way to break into healthcare information technology. One of the most contentious issues facing job candidates is the university degree versus certificate debate. Put another way: Are you more likely to land a position--and be better qualified to work in health IT--if you get a master's degree in the field or complete a shorter certification program?
Students I've spoken with who are enrolled in master's programs at major universities have many positive comments about what they've learned. But some also complain that there's too much theory and high-level conceptualization, and not enough hands on training.
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July 12, 2012
Today, the Framingham, Mass.-based IDC Health Insights released a new MarketScape report evaluating Health Information Exchange (HIE) packaged solution offerings. The comprehensive study, IDC MarketScape: U.S. Health Information Exchange Packaged Solutions 2012 Vendor Assessment, outlines the changing market landscape and profiles ten vendors, including Caradigm, Carefx, Certify Data Systems, eClinicalWorks, Infor, Informatics Company of America (ICA), Medecision, Medicity, MobileMD a Siemens Solution, and PatientKeeper.
IDC Health Insights found the market for HIE technology is fragmented with IT suppliers providing solutions with diverse origins ranging from integration engine platforms, portals, clinical messaging, composite applications, information management, and managed network services. New market entrants and merger and acquisition activity continue to change the technical and competitive landscape. Furthermore, the report cited the enterprise market as the fastest growing market segment for HIE technology, given the ability to demonstrate meaningful use and pursue a collaborative care strategy will require the ability to exchange health information across the enterprise.
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By Erin McCann, Associate Editor
Created 07/16/2012
FRAMINGHAM, MA – A new report highlighting the evolving nature of health information exchanges (HIEs) found that the HIE market is shifting its priorities from that of connecting the ecosystem with exchange data and meaningful use incentives to turning data into “actionable information.”
The IDC MarketScape study, "U.S. Health Information Exchange Platform Solutions 2012 Vendor Assessment," evaluated 16 vendors that offer a platform solution – which IDC Health Insight officials define as having development tools, published APIs, education of technical staff, a broad ecosystem of partners and professional services – for HIE and how those platforms have evolved.
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Written by Kathleen Roney | July 12, 2012
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released "A Human Factors Guide to Enhance EHR Usability of Critical User Interactions when Supporting Pediatric Patient Care" to address the lag of electronic health record adoption by pediatric care providers.
NIST developed the guide because pediatric patients have unique characteristics that translate to higher complexity for providing care with paper-based charts and EHRs. According to the report, the unique characteristics of pediatric patients may be a factor in the low adoption of EHRs by pediatric providers. For this reason, the report details recommendations to enhance EHR usability when supporting pediatric patient care.
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Monday, July 16, 2012
by Helen R. Pfister, Susan R. Ingargiola and Christine D. Chang
The federal government continued to implement the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, during the second quarter of 2012. Below is a summary of key developments and milestones achieved between April 1and June 30.
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Enjoy!
David.