HealthTech

Articles that catalogue health and beauty industry.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

IT key to Medicare pilot programs for chronically ill

IT key to Medicare pilot programs for chronically ill: "IT key to Medicare pilot programs for chronically ill
Source: Healthcare IT News / Author: Fred Bazzoli, Senior editor
Program announcement
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Email the editor

WASHINGTON Pilot programs in eight regions that will involve 160,000 Medicare beneficiaries in health support programs will rely heavily on healthcare information technology.
The Medicare Health Support initiative will be tested for about two years to see if beneficiaries� care and satisfaction can be improved while saving Medicare money. If so, it could be expanded at the direction of the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Organizations running the pilot programs will make use of clinical decision support software that will rely on information garnered from claims information and other sources, a CMS official said. That software will rely strongly on evidence-based medicine to give physicians and patients the best direction in providing care.
The pilot programs are looking for beneficiaries who have congestive heart failure or diabetes. Both diseases, when not carefully managed, can result in high-cost emergency or acute care interventions.
For example, about 14 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have congestive heart failure among their chronic conditions, and these beneficiaries account for 43 percent of Medicare spending. About 18 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have diabetes, and they account for 32 percent of Medicare spending. "

Health care system turns to IT for patient care plans - Computerworld

Health care system turns to IT for patient care plans - ComputerworldAUGUST 08, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD)
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NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System is rolling out an IT
system that generates suggested care plans for physicians based on data
about previous patient outcomes and then sends alerts if treatments don't
appear to be working.

The Patient Health Monitor project, which the health care system began
two months ago at its flagship NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, currently
uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to create treatment plans for
patients in cardiac intensive-care units. The plans are based on the
records of 7,500 cardiac patients, which are among 2.5 million patient
records in a data repository.

In addition, the system takes data from equipment such as heart
monitors and provides alerts to physicians via tablet PCs if patients
deviate from projected outcomes, said J. David Liss, vice president of
government relations and strategic initiatives at the health system.

Unlike traditional clinical support systems that use rules engines to
suggest patient care, the health monitor is based on inferencing
technology designed by a NewYork-Presbyterian physician. The software
builds care plans by matching patient characteristics such as age, disease
type and medication history with successful prior outcomes. "All of
the alerts are relevant to the patient because they are based on a history
of cases," Liss said.

In addition, because the repository is updated with new patient records
every 24 hours, the AI system has an ever-growing pool of data to exploit
to generate the care plans, Liss said.

Plans call for the health monitor technology to be expanded to other
departments in the hospital and to other hospitals in the NewYork-Presbyterian
system, according to Liss.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the first to use the AI-based system.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the first to use the AI-based system.
Image Credit: Newscom

The project was funded by $250,000 in donations from Verizon
Communications Inc. and Intel Corp. and $50,000 worth of donated equipment
from Computer Motion Inc. and Dell Inc.

Eric Brown, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said he knows of
only one other health care entity that has launched a similar initiative.
The Mayo Clinic and IBM in August 2004 said they were starting to use a
DB2 database to help physicians treat patients.

"This idea of a decision-support system is one of the outcomes
we'd like to see from the introduction of electronic medical records ...
moving to an era of personalized medicine," Brown said. "It is
taking your particular situation and plugging it into the database -- not
searching for all people who have had a heart attack, but all patients who
have had a heart attack who look like you."

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping






Stewart Cairns for The New York Times

Dr. Eugene Heslin receives computer training
from Lori Jesman.







Published: September 19, 2005




He is a self-described techie, but that did not help Dr. Eugene P. Heslin
harness the wonders of electronic medical records. The technology seemed too
complicated and expensive for a small medical group like his six-doctor family
practice in rural upstate New York



"The large groups can afford the software," said Dr. Heslin, a
family physician in Saugerties. "For the onesies and twosies, small
groups like ours, there is no profit margin."


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.


Sunday, September 18, 2005

Katrina Shows Need to Computerize Records - Yahoo! News

Katrina Shows Need to Computerize Records - Yahoo! News: "Federal health officials are working to open a database of prescription drug records to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees piece their health care back together.
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The project, still developing three weeks after the disaster, underscores the glaring reality that the hurricane destroyed medical records of untold numbers of people, possibly complicating treatment decisions for years to come."

Las Vegas SUN: Medicine Slow to Modernize Recordkeeping

Las Vegas SUN: Medicine Slow to Modernize Recordkeeping: " Electronic medical records could improve patient care and possibly save billions of dollars, yet many doctors aren't investing in the technology because they may not reap the savings - insurers and the government will, researchers report. "

Thursday, September 01, 2005

The Healthcare Information Gap: A Global and National Perspective

The Healthcare Information Gap: A Global and National Perspective

Other Healthcare Technology Links

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http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/futurehealthcare.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/healthcarecareer_new_tech.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/healthcaretraining_for_tomorrow.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/ITfornursing.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/nurses_choose_pdas.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/nursinginformaticscareers.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/nursingtechnology.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/post_graduate_diploma_in_nursing.htm 



http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/the_future_of_the_body_diagnostic.htm  




http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/university_provides_3d_virtual.htm




http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/virtual_patients.htm




http://www.healthtechny.org/articles/wireless_networked_world.htm