Detroit Medical Center employs 10 robotsThe Detroit Medical Center has deployed a fleet of 10 robots to help doctors and nurses care for patients. The robots will each be leased for about $3,500 per month. Control station consoles, which include joysticks for maneuvering the robots and screens for displaying patients' electronic records, will cost $5,000 each to purchase and install in a hospital or a doctor's home. The robots and control stations enable patients to talk with doctors who might be at the medical center's downtown Detroit campus, at Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital 38 miles away or at home in Bloomfield Hills.

Cedars-Sinai not ready for CPOE –Take 2Two years after a failed implementation of computerized physician order entry technology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is used as a cautionary tale in the push toward IT upgrades in healthcare. Officials at the hospital say they have no intention of trying to implement CPOE for at least a year. Cedars Sinai, near Beverly Hills, Calif., has often been touted as one of the "most wired" hospitals in the country, but it was unable to cope with an in-house system that seemed to give doctors too many unnecessary alerts.

Rhode Island Hospital to upgrade decision-makingRhode Island Hospital in Providence, an academic medical center that serves as a teaching hospital for Brown Medical School, plans to boost decision-making with new technology. The hospital tapped technology company TheraDoc in Salt Lake City. TheraDoc software will automate surveillance of discreet patient data, streamline data collection, and bring critical information to the clinician's attention. The software will be employed to help the hospital's infection control team to make better-informed, timely decisions, in an effort to reduce patients' risk of hospital-acquired infection.

Three hospital systems automate care managementUNC Health Care, Chapel Hill, N.C.; Medical Center Hospital, Odessa, Texas; and Sacred Heart Hospital, Pensacola, Fla. have selected technology from A4 Health Systems in Cary, N.C. The technology, called Canopy Care Management Solution, will enable the hospitals to automate the care management process with the intent of creating a smoother workflow, efficiencies and reduced costs.