Archive for Health Care

Portal Generates Revenue

PortalsMag.com: Portal Generates Revenue

The portal (a combination of IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM partner Bowstreet’s Portlet Factory) saves each of Ball Memorial’s 50 employed physicians 15 minutes a day, meaning the scheduling of an additional patient per physician per day. That represents $60,000 a month in additional revenue, or $720,000 a year.

It is great to see someone actually quantify the savings that these new stakeholder technologies create. We know they make things “better” but exactly how much remains an elusive question.

16 November, 2005 | No comments

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Now, though, in a collaboration with 500 like-minded doctors, as well as hospitals, insurers and employers in two Hudson Valley counties, Dr. Heslin and his partners are clearing barriers that have made modern information technology inaccessible to the hundreds of thousands of small doctors’ offices around the nation.

It is interesting to watch the emegergence of Electronic Medical Records. From a Digital Stakeholder perspective it seems to be follwing the adoption of EDI, except much faster. In the early days of EDI only big companies could take advantage of the technology. But as time progressed and the internet was incorporated it soon extended to small and medium businesses. Now EMR is doing the same thing. To trule be useful as much as possible needs to be electronic. If doctors and health care providers continue to use both paper and electronic there will be very litte advantage seen.

19 September, 2005 | No comments

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Expect recruiters to Google you for

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Expect recruiters to Google you for “digital dirt”

Most job hunters never even know when they’ve lost out on an interview because of “digital dirt.”

It could include your chat-room tirade on an ex-roommate’s sex life or that photo of you and college buddies smoking something that’s not exactly tobacco — stuff a prospective employer finds by Googling your name, stuff that causes her to scratch you off the “to call in” list.

Here’s a new use for Googling.

4 September, 2005 | No comments

RedNova News - Health - IT That Improves the Patient Experience

RedNova News - Health - IT That Improves the Patient Experience

Many technologies have the potential to transform the patient experience. Some currently are in use; others are just around the corner.

Obviously there are lots of ways for IT to “improve” the patient experience, but what is an improvement for one person is not for another. This article presents some good insights on promising technologies.

29 August, 2005 | No comments

Urine Battery Turns Pee Into Power

Urine Battery Turns Pee Into Power

Urine is one of a number of bodily fluids rich in ions—electrically charged atoms. Researchers in Singapore leveraged this fact to produce a credit card-size battery (bottom) powered by urine. The device produces about 1.5 volts, the same as a standard AA battery, and can last for 90 minutes.

Top photograph copyright Chris Collins/Corbis; bottom photograph courtesy Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology

John Roach
National Geographic News
August 18, 2005

Before you next flush the toilet, consider this: Scientists in Singapore have developed a battery powered by urine.

Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology created the credit card-size battery as a disposable power source for medical test kits.

Diagnostic test kits commonly analyze the chemical composition of a person’s urine to detect a malady. Ki Bang Lee and his colleagues realized that the substance being tested—urine—could also power the test.

“In order to address this problem, we have designed a disposable battery on a chip, which is activated by biofluids such as urine,” Lee wrote in an e-mail to National Geographic News.

Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said the technology is a welcome innovation in a time of rising energy prices.

“All jokes [about] urine aside, what is needed are low-cost batteries. …” he said. “The other neat thing about this is the fact that it’s basically a biodegradable battery.”

Geek.Com users are having a proverbial field day about the notorious “urine power” study.

18 August, 2005 | No comments

destinationCRM.com: The Top Three Business Security Targets

destinationCRM.com: The Top Three Business Security Targets

IBM’s Global Business Security Index reports that virus-laden emails and criminally driven security attacks increased by 50 percent in the first half of 2005. There was a significant rise in customized attacks on government, financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. The increase, along with a decrease in less profitable threats like spam and simple computer viruses, indicates a growth in targeted attacks against specific organizations and industries, with attacks no longer being focused on simply crashing an IT department’s computer system.

10 August, 2005 | No comments

Hospitals Are Buying IT

destinationCRM.com: Hospitals Are Buying IT

The reason for the spending increase is that the healthcare industry has traditionally ignored information technology in favor of medical technology, according to Noel Stevens, senior research analyst for IDC. “Although at the forefront of technology in terms of diagnostic and treatment equipment, the industry has long been deemed the laggard with regard to information technology,” Stevens writes. “However, now faced with an aging population requiring at-home or longterm care, escalating overhead costs, and information privacy regulations such as HIPAA, the industry is under intense pressure to bring its information technology into the 21st century.” Click here to find out more!

An excellent article which examines the expected growth in the sectors as well as the reasons why it is happening.

3 August, 2005 | No comments

Journal Gazette | 07/24/2005 | No human touch

Journal Gazette | 07/24/2005 | No human touch
Dr. Robot? I had read about these robots a few years ago and the idea was that they could step in for busy executives who could not make a trip to an important meeting, but using them in health care? Part of me says great idea and the other says, I would not care for it too much. Illness is something we would prefer to interact with a real person about.

What do you think? How would you feel about your doctor making a visit via. Dr. Robot?

25 July, 2005 | No comments

New hospital opens in south DeKalb | ajc.com

New hospital opens in south DeKalb | ajc.com
Georgia’s first digital hospital, from the ground up. Some great stuff happening here. It should serve as an example for future development. Things like internet portals in every room as well as wireless throughout and electronic medical records are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as this hospital tries to improve patient care while containing costs.

18 July, 2005 | No comments

Canada Invests in Health IT

Canada Invests in Health IT
At least in Canada it looks like electronic medical records has moved one step closer to reality.

7 July, 2005 | No comments

CNN.Com - Beijing Clinic Ministers To Online Addicts - Jul 1, 2005

CNN.Com - Beijing Clinic Ministers To Online Addicts - Jul 1, 2005

Perhaps I should procure airfare and lodging accommodations in Beijing in an effort to clinically treat my addiction to the Internet.

2 July, 2005 | No comments

HoustonChronicle.Com - Internet Registry Helps Track Immunizations

HoustonChronicle.Com - Internet Registry Helps Track Immunizations

A Web-based registry helps parents, doctors and schools keep track of children’s immunization records and schedules

By SALATHEIA BRYANT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Deloitte & Touche LLP financial analyst Leah Trilli usually spends her workday examining complicated documents to determine a company’s value.

But today she’s poring over one child’s immunization records — shots for measles, polio, tetanus — slowly typing in the data from paper cards to an electronic template, careful not to make a mistake.

When finally completed, Trilli pumped her fist triumphantly in the air. It took her about 40 minutes to input one shot record into the system, which health officials are hoping will help improve the city’s dismal vaccination rates — 61.4 percent compared with a national average of 75 percent in 2002, the latest figures.

“The average time is about four minutes,” Trilli offered. “We’re used to working with numbers for huge corporations. This is a different project because you’re dealing with individual people. There’s a learning curve you have to get over.”

23 June, 2005 | No comments

HoustonChronicle.Com - Risky Gay Sex Linked To Online Encounters

HoustonChronicle.Com - Risky Gay Sex Linked To Online Encounters

Reuters News Service

ATLANTA - Gay and bisexual men who meet partners over the Internet are more likely to engage in risky sex but have a greater tendency to do so with people who have the same HIV status, a U.S. study said Wednesday.

16 June, 2005 | No comments

Few Online ‘Canadian Pharmacies’ Based in Canada, FDA Says

Few Online ‘Canadian Pharmacies’ Based in Canada, FDA Says

Study Finds Most Sites Are Linked to U.S. Entities

By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 14, 2005; 6:23 AM

Most Web sites that purport to sell quality, discounted prescription drugs from online stores in Canada appear to be controlled or owned by individuals or companies located outside Canada, including many in the United States, according to a study commissioned by the Food and Drug Administration.

The study examined some 11,000 Internet pharmacies, finding that only about a thousand of those Web sites actually sold prescription drugs and that fewer than 25 percent were registered to or hosted by companies or individuals in Canada.

14 June, 2005 | No comments

TimesDispatch.Com | Wireless Devices Let Deaf Stay Connected

TimesDispatch.Com | Wireless Devices Let Deaf Stay Connected

Tammy Giovannetti (right) has been deaf all her life. She shows sign-language interpreter Bernadette Mayhall how she has learned to communicate through text-messaging on her T-Mobile Sidekick.
EVA RUSSO/TIMES-DISPATCH

13 June, 2005 | No comments

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