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November 10, 2009

Wireless monitor makes its debut in EU

The Sensium Life Pebble, a new wireless vital signs monitor, is being made available to the European Union and all other countries that have adopted the CE standard for certified medical devices.

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Current Issue

November 2009

November 2009

  • CCHIT begins 2011 ceritification
  • 50,000 IT Jobs: Who will fill them?
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Featured Podcast

Industry News November 25
HITECH Security Preparedness with Rob Seliger, CEO of Sentillion
Two recent surveys reveal that healthcare organizations across the country are not prepared to meet the security rules required by the HITECH Act. In this podcast editor Bernie Monegain asks Seliger about security challenges specific to the healthcare industry, and why most hospitals are at best only partially prepared.
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Featured Video

Hospitals & IDNs, Payers October 20
HealthPort on Recovery Audit Contractors
Lori Brocato, RCM Product Manager at HealthPort, discusses how revenue cycle management can prepare an organization for a visit from recovery audit contractors.
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Upcoming Events

  • November 29, 2009
    RSNA 2009 Quality Counts
  • December 09, 2009
    EHR 2009: Transforming Healthcare Delivery with Electronic Health Records
  • January 19, 2010
    San Francisco 'Healthcare Stimulus Exchange' Conference
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Press Releases

November 25, 2009
Spacelabs Healthcare Introduces Enhanced Wireless Capabilities for Ultraview SL Portable Patient Monitors
November 24, 2009
Visage Imaging Introduces Visage 7 for Windows and Mac OS X
November 23, 2009
QlikTech Wins Healthcare IT Innovation Award
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International Section

Paperless hospital in Scotland signals 'new era in patient care'
Stobill hospital, a new hospital opened by the NHS Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, is being touted as one of the "most modern and well-equipped" hospitals in Scotland. MORE
Middle East health IT execs to meet in Oman
A new conference based in Oman will draw together government, healthcare and technology executives from across the Middle East. MORE
German hospital rolls out digital pen for diabetes patients
Bethesda Hospital in Stuttgart, Germany, is using digital pen technology to help diabetes patients manage the illness. MORE
NHS targets improved care with telemedicine project
The UK's National Health Service plans to leverage IOCOM technology in its East of England telemedicine project to improve care for stroke patients. MORE
Premier Healthcare Germany partners with Offsurance on medical travel platform
Nuance ramps up its healthcare commitment in Europe
UK hospital first of kind with ePrescribing solution
Mobile center launched in UK
Nine NHS trusts install learning management IT
IT deal to benefit Middle Eastern hospitals
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Blog

July 06, 2009 John Halamka, MD

International EHR Adoption

I was recently asked to compare EHR adoption in the US to other countries. Based on my own experience and the comments I received from colleagues, there are three aspects to consider... MORE
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Latest Headlines
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  • White House pushes IT as 'pillar' of cost-containing health reform
  • Maine docs pilot 'e-visits'
  • VA, Kaiser plan to link electronic medical records
  • Vendor Notebook - Cardinal Health to co-market Patient Safety Technologies' safety sponge system
  • Anesthesia IT users see benefits, complain about functionality

Resource Central

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    On-Demand--Integrated, Real-time Decision Making – A Prescription for Improving Patient Outcomes and Your Bottom Line
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    Validation process and compliance support with IBM Maximo Asset Management in regulated industries
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    On-Demand--Summa Health System: From Business Case to Value – Measuring the Impact of SSO & Context Management
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    On-Demand--XML Infrastructure for Healthcare: The Critical Link to Innovation with Information
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HEALTHCARE IT JOB SPOT

  • Business Analyst - Life Care Centers of America - Cleveland, TN
  • Clinical Systems Analyst - Life Care Centers of America - Cleveland, TN
  • SQL Developer - Life Care Centers of America - Cleveland, TN
  • Coder - Team Lead (RHIT, RHIA or CCS) - Ft. Worth, TX - Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southwest Fort Worth - Fort Worth, TX
  • Manager, Health Information Management/Patient ID - Johns Hopkins Health System - Baltimore, MD
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Recent Comments

  • USED STIMULUS FUND TO BUILD SMART INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES HIT
    Gadema

    We must used some of the Stimulus Fund, to Build Smart/Intelligent Infrastructure Services for: Healthcare IT, Broadband, Smart Grids, and Transportation Systems. This Investment will Ensured New Jobs Creation and Economic Recovery.

    For decades, Microsoft's Desktop Applications have Increased Productivity, Efficiency, and costs Savings in the work Place.

    Proper Deployment of Health Information Technology (HIT) Solutions and Training will Increased Productivity (i, e, medical data mining/warehousing, risks treatment, service delivery), Efficiency (i, e, medical errors, redundant and inappropriate care), and have a Costs Savings of around 20-30% of our Annual National Healthcare Expenditures ($2.4 Trillions).

    The Engine for Economic Growth in this 21st Century is "Braodband." We can start by, Deploying a pure Packet-based,All Optical/IP, Multi-Service National Transport Network Infrastructure, using Optical Ethernet throughout this National "Network of Networks." This "Network of Networks" can then Connect All Optical Islands, Nationwide.

    The Investment in this Next Generation "Network of Networks", in addition to Immediate, New Jobs Crreation and Economic Recovery, can also Serve as a Business Driver for: e-Healthcare, e-Commerce, e-Education, Energy Systems, Transportation Systems, Social Networking, Entertsainment, etc.

    This Investment is like the Investments that were made in the past, in Electrification of Rural Areas, and in the National Transportation Inter-State Hgihways, which Increased Productivity, and the GDP.

    Please See: gkquoquoi.blogspot.com for Summary Deployment Plan.

    Gadema Korboi Quoquoi
    President & CEO
    COMPULINE INTERNATIONAL, INC.

  • This is a brittle, unsustainable, overly complex approach
    munnecke

    This is an issue I have been working on for 30 years. As a VA employee, I was one of the initial designers of the VA's VistA system, then as a VP and chief scientist at SAIC, one of the designers of the DoD's CHCS system. In the 1990's, I worked on a (rejected) proposal to install a variation of the VistA system at Kaiser.

    The basic problem with this approach is that it attempts to integrate around the enterprise, not the patient. Each organization places themselves at the center of the information system, and places other organizations at the periphery. N organizations require N-squared integration efforts and agreements.

    Imagine that Kaiser had an intercom system connecting all of their vital offices. Each critical office had fixed button position, so that you could instantly talk to the desired office. Now, imagine that VA had the same, and the two announced an effort to "integrate" their two systems. Even if they succeeded in figuring out how to do this, it would be a complex, brittle, non-scalable solution. And if they wanted to integrate with Scripps Health, for example, the complexity would start over again, only more complex as there would be a three-way negotiation involved.

    Trying to "integrate" VA and Kaiser information in this way is like trying to integrate their intercoms. What about DoD information from Balboa Naval Hospital? Do we initiate a DOD-VA-Kaiser sharing agreement? (DoD and VA have been at this for 30 years now, and are still bickering about it. I've demonstrated three different VA-DoD interfaces; all of which have been shot down for political, not technical reasons). So now we are layering the political complexity of "integrating" two federal agencies and a large private organization. What about "integrating" Scripps Health? Do we start the whole process again?

    And why are we doing this on a regional basis? Even if the two-way integration effort in San Diego works, what happens if the patient moves to Long Beach? What happens to folks in smaller organizations, or who are uninsured and unemployed? Do they simply not have a medical record?

    To complicate this already complicated situation, we are asking all of Kaiser to trust all of VA with the information exchanged. As each new tendril in the tangled web of enterprises is added, all have to trust everyone else. And the security of the overall system is only as good as the weakest participant. One bad apple in the system can spoil the entire system; creating an ever-larger barrel through enterprise integration creates an ever-greater incentive for the bad apples to appear.

    Then we have to look the evolution of the system over time. This effort is essentially a "stop the world, I want to integrate it" approach. If one enterprise moves in an innovative direction, the others will not be able to participate until they all move in lockstep in the new direction. If advances in genomics or proteomics take place, for example, how will this be communicated. And what if this innovation happens outside of the enterprises who have lock-stepped integrated their complexity?

    This represents a brittle, complex, unsustainable model of integration that is a good way to channel billions of dollars of federal funding to vendors and the management teams dedicated to dealing with this.

    As a taxpayer and someone who has played a lead role in this process for 30 years, I have to say that it appears to me that we are trying to get out of a hole by digging it deeper.

    The way out of this complexity trap is to reframe health information around the individual patient. The patient is at the center, and providers are at the periphery. If someone wants to access that information, it happens according to the policies defined by the access "shell" around the information - and this is appropriately visible.

    Health care enterprises (whose half-life is probably one third that of the patients they serve) would integrate with these personal health records. If they want to add their own enterprise approach on top of this, fine. But we shouldn't be paying federal monies to support the internal IT of health care providers any more that tax payers should be paying to support IT within airline companies.

    Another way out of the situation is to frame health care IT as a "space" rather than an "integrated system." The web, for example, was designed as a "space for information to exist" rather than an integrated system for Google to search. This invites a different model of patient-centric activities and peer-to-peer linkages, rather than enterprise-centric, hierarchical and regional activities.

    The situation we are in is a little like asking Ma Bell to invent the Internet. They had a perfectly good system (in their perspective) of circuit-switched phones and a great billing system to track long-distance calls by the minute. Why invent all of this dynamic routing, packet switching, and make users support their own routers when Ma Bell could do it centrally? Just give everyone a modem, and let them dial in and pay the monthly charges.

    The health care industry is acting like the Ma Bell. "We are the smart center, and you are the dumb edges of the network" Inverting this model to a "smart edges" approach to health information technology is a very necessary approach. But I'm afraid we're not going to get there as long as we pour money and efforts into systems such as this.

    Tom Munnecke
    Encinitas, Ca
    http://munnecke.com
    (papers on patient centered records: http://munnecke.com/blog/?page_id=248 )

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