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Nuance Communications unveiled its advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and its medical mobile apps for smartphones at HIMSS10 last week in Atlanta.
Merge Healthcare and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a partnership to create a testing environment for the company’s new mobile healthcare technologies.
William Denman, MD, has been appointed chief medical officer (CMO) at GE Healthcare.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has sent letters to 31 U.S. hospitals asking about their experiences in implementing health IT under the $19 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). He is seeking to ensure the “effective and efficient use of taxpayer money” in implementing health IT, such as computerized provider order entry systems and EHRs.
Written by Lisa Fratt
CHICAGO--Information technology is essential to radiology practices because of their complex data and workflow. In addition, the use of IT improves efficiency and quality, reduces costs and opens doors to new services, according to Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, vice chair of radiology and informatics at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of Boston, who spoke at the annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting on Monday.
Written by Lisa Fratt
CHICAGO--Modification of the order entry workflow can change physician behavior and result in fewer low-yield imaging orders, shared Vartan Vartanians, MD, clinical research associate at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of Boston during a scientific session at the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA) meeting.
Health IT is taking a central role in the current healthcare debate, according to a report published by the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, George Washington University Medical Center and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Written by Jeff Byers
Representatives of two of the three data and disease management Medicare Demonstration Programs that did not get cancelled discussed their programs' success strategies at the sixth annual Connected Health Symposium last week in Boston.
The integration of quality control (QC) procedures for image and data integrity in a digital environment not only improves patient care, it reduces both professional and administrative costs to a medical imaging practice.
A new policy statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) advocates that healthcare facilities use high-quality video conferencing systems to connect expert neurologists for rapid, remote examination and treatment of patients undergoing suspected strokes. Commentary, published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that reimbursement obstacles and the necessity of establishing "stroke systems of care" for effective assessment and treatment remain.
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Telemedicine is as effective as a bedside evaluation for acute stroke, according to a guideline released last week by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. Additionally, imaging data, preferably from MRI, should be the determining factor in defining transient ischemic attack, which should be treated as urgently as a full-blown stroke.
Although the consensus is that EHRs have the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. healthcare providers, less than 2 percent of acute-care hospitals have implemented a comprehensive EHR; further, less than 8 percent have a basic EHR in place, according to a study published online March 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine that is scheduled for publication in the April 16 print edition.
The introduction of a computerized radiology order entry (CROE) system with decision support capabilities into an integrated multispecialty group practice may substantially reduce the growth rate of high-cost outpatient imaging volume, according to the results of a seven-year, time-series analysis published online in the journal Radiology.
Relatively few U.S. hospitals—between 2 and 12 percent—use EHRs, according to a hospital IT adoption survey, conducted in conjunction with the American Hospital Association (AHA).
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
The state of Maine currently has the largest operating statewide exchange in the country in relation to population. Although Devore Culver, Executive Director of Maine’s HealthInfoNet, expects that distinction to change in the months ahead, the state’s HIE is entering the final months of its demonstration phase, and is slated to move in to its full statewide implementation in the second half of 2010. Culver, who is former CIO of Eastern Maine Health Care, recently spoke with CMIO about the progress HealthInfoNet has made.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.
