Sticky Insecurity
July 26, 2005 - The signs were everywhere. Craig Castro, the chief information officer of Community Medical Centers in Fresno , Calif. , could see the security threats to his information systems because they were pasted on about 2,600 computer workstations across the acute-care hospital system. On the edges of screens were sticky notes containing passwords and log in instructions. "People would never give out their PIN number to their ATM card," Castro observes. "It's different in the healthcare setting." The sticky notes were, Castro acknowledges, merely a survival tool for the staff. Multiple passwords and complex log in routines had been longstanding problems at the three-hospital health system, which staffs about 850 beds. Its "best of breed" approach to information systems has spawned some 180 applications, many requiring unique log-in procedures. To facilitate their use, Community deployed generic passwords to gain network access, the first step to entering individual applications. But some managers still needed up to 10 passwords, says George Vasquez, director of technology services. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.healthleaders.com/magazine/feature1.php?contentid=69913&categoryid=155
Unbound Binds Nursing Reference Apps
July 26, 2005 - Unbound Medicine Inc. has released a suite of hand-held reference applications designed for nurses. The Charlottesville, Va.-based vendor's Nursing Central software offers electronic versions of "Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary," "Davis's Drug Guide," "Diseases and Disorders: A Nursing Therapeutics Manual" and "Davis's Comprehensive Handbook of Laboratory and Diagnostic Tests with Nursing Implications."
The combined applications give information on 4,600 drugs and a database of more than 56,000 searchable medical terms. The package also enables nurses to search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database and track other nursing and medical journals.
Nurses can access the Nursing Central applications via smart phones, BlackBerry wireless devices and PDAs running the Palm OS or Windows Mobile operating systems. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.unboundmedicine.com/news_nursing_central.htm
Tennesee Oncology Upgrades with EMR System
July 26, 2005 - Tennessee Oncology is buying an electronic medical record system that will allow it to connect its 37 oncologists throughout its 30 offices. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/industries/health_care/hospitals/2005/07/25/nashville_daily16.html
Winning Over Clinicians Key to Success Says Economist
July 25, 2005 - Winning over busy, sceptical clinicians to the benefits of NHS IT modernisation has been highlighted as a key challenge by the influential journal, the Economist. A two page analysis of Connecting for Health’s programme concludes that the agency is making a better fist of the ‘dauntingly vast’ National Programme for IT than pessimists expected, but adds that until clinicians are won over it will be too early to declare victory. The article explores the setting up the national programme, the procurement of systems for the five English regions and the robust style of its leader, CfH chief executive, Richard Granger whom it describes as “a pit-bull of a man, even his fans term him ‘Mr Angry.’ Full Text Article
Source: http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/item.cfm?ID=1338
Report Highlights High Costs of Ignoring Health Tech
July 22, 2005 - The U.S. health care industry has neglected widely used systems engineering tools and technologies, and that neglect has contributed to the nearly 100,000 preventable deaths a year, according to a new report from the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. The health care industry’s collective inattention to systems engineering has a mind-boggling cost of a half-trillion dollars a year due to inefficiency, the report states. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.govhealthit.com/article89668-07-22-05-Web Health IT Comes of Age
July 26, 2005 - Commentary in iHealth Beat discusses current work being conducted in Health IT and how the work has been maturing over the last year. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemid=112887
State Takes Medical Data High-tech
July 26, 2005 - The The National Institute of Medicine says the U.S. health care system is at least a decade behind other high-risk industries in using information technology to improve efficiency and reduce errors. Florida wants to fix that - and be a model for the nation - by linking doctors, hospitals, insurers and others in the system. The idea is to create a medical Internet that offers instant access to information about a patient's history so doctors are less likely to prescribe a lethal combination of drugs. Full Text Article
Source: http://news.tbo.com/news/MGBJE0DMLBE.html
Majority of Consumers Believe Electronic Medical Records Can Improve Medical Care, Accenture Survey Finds
July 20, 2005 - A majority of U.S. consumers believe that electronic medical records can provide valuable benefits, especially during medical emergencies, and can improve overall medical care, according to the results of a survey released today by Accenture. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=_dyn%5Cdynamicpressrelease_857.xml
Kaiser Switching Centers to Digital Health Records
July 22, 2005 - Kaiser Permanente of Georgia is in the midst of converting thousands of patient and health-care profesionals to an electronic medical records system. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2005/07/25/newscolumn6.html?from_rss=1
Survey: Docs Use Portals for Decision-Support Tasks
July 13, 2005 - Seventy-four percent of doctors at hospitals ranked "most-wired" use physician portals to access research and reference material, compared with just 7% of physicians at the "least-wired" hospitals and 37% of all respondents, according to a survey by Hospitals and Health Networks. The percentage of respondents in each group said at least 61% of their doctors use physician portals for certain decision-support tasks. Full Text Article
Source: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/index.cfm?action=dspItem&itemID=112674&changedID=112656
< back > *******< More news ... > |