Pfizer and Epocrates have announced a collaboration to give healthcare providers mobile access to the Pfizer Medical Information Group to obtain answers to their product questions or to report an adverse event. For the first time, clinicians can make direct contact through the Epocrates drug reference app on their iPhone to pharmaceutical manufacturers and immediately apply findings to patient care. Pfizer is enabling easy, direct access to its Medical Information services, via the Epocrates channel, in an effort to enhance the safe and effective use of its medicines, and help improve the quality of patient care.
Merge Healthcare, of Milwaukee, has announced new releases of its core interoperability solutions. These applications bring advanced capabilities to vendors interested in developing and integrating the latest medical imaging standards into their health IT products. Merge’s WebAccess is a standards-based software portal technology capable of consolidating diagnostic information from multiple disparate sources and delivering it to users through a zero-client web browser. Already in use by providers to "image-enable" EHR and HIE solutions, this latest version provides additional standards-based middleware components to help expand health information exchange outside the traditional clinical or provider "silos." WebAccess 2.3 now offers Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) capability, which manages the multiple patient identities that typically exist across a healthcare enterprise. In addition to WebAccess, Merge recently released its latest MergeCOM-3 Toolkit offering. The latest DICOM release includes structured report templates that facilitate workflow efficiency and mining of critical information, such as radiation dose exposure, that is typically locked away in free text reports.
Covidien, the Dublin-based medical-equipment company spun off from Tyco International, has agreed to buy Plymouth, Minn.-based ev3, Inc. for $2.6 billion to add products for heart disease. The acquisition will add ev3’s stents, angioplasty balloons, plaque removal systems, and catheters to treat disease of the arteries to Covidien’s product range, which specializes in staples, suture needles, wound care, scalpels and products used in surgery. The deal will give Covidien a bigger stake in the vascular surgery market.
US Oncology, Inc., of The Woodlands, Tex., has announced its new iKnowMed Technology Platform to support community oncologists nationwide. The new platform enhances cancer care quality and practice efficiency through integrated, oncology-specific technologies that enable community oncologists to solve challenges in the areas of care delivery, drug management, and revenue cycle management. The iKnowMed Technology Platform demonstrates US Oncology’s focus on creating solutions to help oncologists improve a broad range of care delivery, drug management, and revenue cycle management processes within the community oncology practice setting.
Allscripts has announced that Healthcare South has selected the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management solution to enhance the quality of patient care, improve physician and patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery in its nine pediatric and family practice offices across the Boston area. Healthcare South joins the Harbor Medical Group, a nearby multispecialty practice with 71 physicians, in using the Allscripts solution. Both groups belong to the South Shore Physician Healthcare Organization (PHO), which is partly owned by South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass.
SRS, of Montvale, N.J., has announced that the Retina Group, of Washington, D.C. has selected the SRS hybrid EMR for their 20 high-performance specialists. The Retina Group is the largest practice dedicated to treating retinal, vitreal, and macular diseases in the metropolitan Washington area. SRS was designed with direct input by its high-performance physicians to provide them with a system that fits their needs, helps them to work more efficiently, and enables them to achieve a rapid return on their investment.
BridgeHead Software, a UK-based maker of Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) technology, has announced an agreement with SunGard Availability Services to offer Secure2Disk Backup and Recovery Solution powered by EMC Data Domain to healthcare providers in North America. This alliance enables customers using the BridgeHead HSV platform to leverage the power and experience of SunGard Availability Services, a business continuity provider to more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies. The collaboration has arisen out of healthcare’s increasing reliance upon electronic health records and advanced digital imaging systems, driven by forces such as the US HITECH Act and Canada Health Infoway, which has in turn spurred the need for reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery and business continuity strategies.
Royal Philips Electronics and RXi Pharmaceuticals announced that they have entered into a joint research agreement to explore the benefits of combining proprietary technologies from both companies for the targeted delivery of experimental therapeutics based on RNA interference (RNAi). Compounds based on RNAi represent a promising new class of drugs for the targeted treatment of a number of diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Currently, however, one of the greatest challenges in developing RNAi-based therapeutics is finding ways to deliver them to their target while keeping them fully active. The joint research between Philips and RXi will address this challenge by exploring, in preclinical studies, the possibility of using RXi’s sd-rxRNA (self-delivering rxRNA) in conjunction with Philips’ ultrasound technology to achieve the targeted delivery and monitoring of RNAi-based compounds in cells.
PerfectServe, of Knoxville, Tenn., announced that Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Fla. recently went live with its enhanced clinician-to-clinician communications system, which reduces risk and eliminates communication breakdowns associated with contacting on-call physicians. On the day of the launch, all of the hospital’s 522 physicians and mid-level providers went live with PerfectServe, which is already processing more than 600 clinical communication events every day. This rapid adoption of PerfectServe as the preferred means of communication was accelerated by the ease of its new voice portal, which enables physicians and nurses to quickly connect with anyone on the medical staff by simply speaking his or her name.
Barco, a Belgium-based medical imaging specialist, has announced the installation of nearly 100 MDRC-2120 clinical review displays and Coronis Fusion 6MP DL large-screen diagnostic displays at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The hospital acquired these brand-new displays to fulfill a multitude of imaging requirements and to enhance productivity, flexibility and accuracy in its radiology operations. The investment fits within Rush's overall strategy to upgrade its existing imaging infrastructure. The Barco Coronis Fusion 6MP DL is a seamless 30-inch diagnostic color display system, enabling radiologists to display grayscale, color-enhanced and fused images side-by-side on a single screen. Its outstanding color richness, brightness and contrast, in addition to its superior resolution, make it an ideal visualizing system for a wide variety of medical modalities, including high-resolution PACS, CT, MRI, chest radiography, echo cardiogram, color ultrasound, CAD, color Doppler, and PET-CT Fusion.
NextGen Healthcare, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc., a provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity solutions, has announced that five critical access hospitals have signed on to implement NextGen Inpatient Clinicals: Caro Community Hospital in Caro, Mich.; Cedar County Memorial Hospital in El Dorado Springs, Mo.; St. Croix Regional Medical Center in St. Croix Falls, Wis.; Salem Township Hospital in Salem, Ill; and Washington County Hospital, Nashville, Ill. Several of these clients already use NextGen Inpatient Financials and are now able to leverage NextGen Healthcare’s complete clinical, financial, and administrative solution for the inpatient market.
Allscripts has announced that Maimonides Medical Center, the premier academic medical center in Brooklyn, has adopted the Allscripts Care Management solution to increase the efficiency of utilization management and discharge planning and improve the coordination of care. Maimonides, which also uses the Allscripts Emergency Department (ED) solution, implemented the web-based care management application in less than four months and has been using it since the end of March.
