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It takes a rare and altruistic person to truly and deeply care about an issue before it directly affects their life. As a journalist, I would like to believe I care that much about what I report. I am obviously immersed in the subject of healthcare IT and have been for more than six years; I find it fascinating.
I was listening not long ago to All Things Considered, to a story about a new breed of 3D sensor-equipped cameras - artificial eyes, essentially, that can make out shape and form, navigating space and gauging its dimensions.
Kaiser Permanente has begun hiring health information technology workers for a new IT campus in Greenwood Village, Colo. Approximately 500 IT staff will be hired in the state by 2015, bringing Kaiser Permanente's total IT presence in Colorado to about 700, officials said.
A recent visit to a small hospital just a couple of miles from my home opened my eyes to how much can be accomplished on the health information technology front even with modest means.
Preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) with UV light has been the recent focus of federal attention. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched a two-year study that will measure the effectiveness of using advanced, no-touch environmental UV disinfection technology to reduce infections.
Mobile health is one of the more transformative developments in healthcare, according to Patricia Abbott, associate professor of nursing at the University of Michigan, School of Nursing, Division of Nursing Business and Health Systems. "The real winners will be the ones who grab on in the front end, and don't wait," she says.
The idea of unique patient identifiers is more than a mere concept extracted from the next dystopian novel. They could very well be reality in the not-so-distant future. The question remaining, however, is whether or not the benefits of such technology outweigh constitutional privacy and patient trust concerns. Naturally, depending on whom you ask, the answer varies considerably.
From year to year, one thing that is guaranteed to happen between HIMSS annual conferences is that the health IT landscape will change, usually in dramatic fashion.
You don't get the star power of a former U.S. president, the leader of one of the country's most respected hospitals, a world renowned cardiologist, the country's health IT chief, and two highly charged and high-powered political debaters, by leaving things to chance.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has begun listening sessions to identify and understand the experience and barriers of organizations as they prepare to scale up health information exchange.