September 10, 2012 David Raths
blog
An announcement in late June by four of Iowa’s leading healthcare organizations signals a trend we are likely to see much more of in the near future: competitors cooperating on care coordination and quality measurement platforms, which requires a greater level of collaboration among CIOs.
June 27, 2012
news
The U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs have reached an agreement with Salt Lake City-based 3M Health Information Systems to make the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary (HDD) freely available as open-source content and software.
June 27, 2012
news
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Innovation Sandbox Cloud and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Interoperability and Integration Innovation Lab are teaming up to create a vendor-neutral health IT innovation network. The network is designed to stimulate development of new ideas and shorten the time required to bring new solutions into practice.
May 29, 2012
news
lifeIMAGE, a Newton, Mass.-based image sharing vendor, has announced it is releasing certain open application programming interfaces (APIs) that can be used by HIT developers or imaging devices to enable the exchange of medical images and related patient records directly from its software. According to lifeIMAGE, its network has been used to share over 160,000,000 medical images across providers representing 40,000 affiliated physicians.
April 4, 2012
blog
I don’t understand why application vendors place little importance on reporting requirements. I get the fact that customers like to customize their reports, but why not make that an inherent feature? Maybe that is why the market is constantly creating so many 3rd party Business Intelligence (BI) vendors. But what about Clinical Intelligence (CI) requirements?
March 8, 2012 By John DeGaspari
article
Connectivity and integration are inherent challenges for hospitals using disparate biomedical devices across a complex care setting. Virtua, a four-hospital health system based in Marlton, N.J., has taken a serious look at the issue following a review of its patient-care IT portfolio of applications. Although Virtua had embarked on installing an EMR system well ahead of meaningful use as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, recording the data from bedside devices was still a manual affair, according to CIO Al Campanella.
February 27, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
Will 2012 be the year of better care transitions? Many of the pieces are in place to make that happen, although there is still much work to be done to remedy this persistent—and multi-faceted—problem. A conference hosted by Kaiser Permanente in Washington, D.C., last October demonstrated the complexity of the care transitions problem. The meeting identified key areas of focus, including the discharge process, medication reconciliation, information flow, and patient and caregiver interaction. At the conference, Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for health IT, urged the participants to embrace technology as a facilitator for improving care transitions, and he made a business case, as fee-for-service payment models are replaced by new models of payment.
February 8, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
This podcast is one in a series of Healthcare Informatics Innovator Award podcasts, which are highlighting this year's Innovator Award winners. The HCI Innovator Awards Program recognizes leadership teams from patient care organizations -- hospitals, medical groups, health systems and others -- that have effectively deployed information technology in order to improve clinical, administrative, financial, or organizational performance. This year’s winners will be honored at the upcoming HIMSS Conference in Las Vegas.
February 2, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
During last week’s Care Innovations Summit, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, I was intrigued by one presentation in particular, one by Christopher Chen, M.D., CEO of ChenMed during the Care Delivery/Primary Care Innovation Panel. A lot of what Dr. Chen said seemed intuitive, providing care teams for a well-defined population. And his company’s approach to technology has many applications beyond his four walls.
January 19, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
Real-time location systems (RTLS) have been selected for asset tracking and nurse call location at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital. The selection process gives some insight into how one major hospital evaluates new technology.
The evaluations took place in the hospital’s 12,000-foot simulation center, followed by pilot runs in two of the hospital’s clinical facilities.
October 27, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
I recently had an opportunity it to speak with Chuck Podesta, CIO of Fletcher Allen Health Care, Burlington, Vt., on the topic of computer hardware choices that hospital CIOs are making. He believes that hardware choices are not a one-size-fits all situation. At bottom, both hardware and software choices are workflow issues, he says.
