Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)
A central part of American hospitals, the intensive care unit (ICU) could benefit greatly from evolving health information technologies, offering clinical decision support, quality analysis and a new foundation for a critical care system changing with an aging patient population. Yet ICU triaging -- prioritizing of the most severe conditions -- has been underutilized and under-encouraged by the federal government, a team of medical researchers argue in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary.
The business value for providers and patients is what will drive health information exchange forward, even though most discussions typically center on the technology involved. And different uses for exchange will require different technologies.
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.
Board members at the St. Paul, Minn.-based HealthEast Care System have unanimously approved a five-year $135 million budget to build a new electronic health record (EHR) system.
A majority of clinicians at The Mount Sinai Hospital using Epic's Beacon module, an electronic medical record (EMR) system designed specifically for cancer treatment, indicated the system improved patient care quality and safety.
Watertown, Mass.-based athenahealth, a provider of cloud-based EMRs, announced recently it would acquire San Mateo, Calif.-based Epocrates, a mobile health company known for its point-of-care medical apps. athenahealth will pay about $293 million in cash. It's a match hailed by the executives of both companies, and also by industry analysts, as a smart move for athenahealth.
"I would characterize this past year as an accelerating year," says John Hoyt, executive vice president of HIMSS Analytics.
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.
Healthcare's clinical community should view population health as a frontier for deepening understanding about the nature of disease, providing incisive clues about patient demographics, behavior patterns and physiological makeup. Large group samples hold the potential to unlock mysteries that physicians may not even realize exist, says Jonathan Teich, MD, chief medical information officer for Amsterdam-based Elsevier.
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.