M.L. Baker

To find drug information about heart attacks, a physician should remember to search not just for “heart attack” but also for “MI,” “infarct” and “myocardial infarction.” Automated, electronic ways to access drug information can miss or misclassify information because there are myriad medical terms. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is moving to standardize […]

Fewer hospitals and health care facilities are complying with federal laws to protect patient privacy, and more patients are refusing to sign forms to release health information, according to a survey by the American Health Information Management Association. Such trends bode ill for the development of a national electronic exchange of health data, warned Dan […]

Dr. David Brailer, who resigned April 19 as national coordinator of health IT, told reporters that the next coordinators job will not be to establish a vision but to keep a process moving forward. Brailer, who is chairing the search for his successor, said a replacement will likely not be in place until the end […]

The outgoing health IT czar, David Brailer, said April 24, in Washington, that making sure health care information follows patients as they receive care from different providers should be one of the governments chief goals. “Everybodys connected but nobody is sharing,” he said. “Thats the natural consequence without federal intervention,” and one of his two […]

The ever-traveling, tireless Health Information Technology Coordinator David Brailer has resigned, the Department of Health and Human Services announced April 21. The announcement of the creation of Brailers position, almost exactly two years ago, has been widely hailed by vendors, health care providers and health care payers as spurring investment in health IT. His office […]

About a dozen health care bloggers have come together on one site to contribute content about a variety of health IT topics. The new blog, called HealthNex, is sponsored by IBM. HealthNex producer and IBM spokesperson Jack Mason said the overall goal is to turn “individual blogs into a collaboration confederation.” A more tangible—and immediate […]

Sam Burgiss, former head of the University of Tennessee Telehealth Network, remembers how videoconferencing changed one patients life. He lived alone and had congestive heart failure. Every quarter, hed spend several days in the hospital, but, in 1998, nurses started monitoring him through videoconferencing. Through remote monitoring equipment, blood cuffs, scales and patients themselves can […]

Dell employees will soon have personal health records that use insurance claims to automatically fill in information about prescriptions, doctor visits and medical conditions. The PC manufacturer said the service will help employees take charge of their own health, and make better decisions about how to access health care. The joint effort between WebMD and […]

Hospitals could save $1 million to $10 million per institution per year if it didnt take so much work to get money from insurance companies, according to a survey of executives at health care providers and insurance companies released by PNC Financial Services Group. Federal standards to exchange information electronically could largely eliminate these costs, […]

Community hospitals and family physicians in rural and suburban Pennsylvania have taken up a plan to make sure a patients general practitioner knows what treatment the patient received in the hospital, and vice versa. Medical errors often occur during handoffs, when a patient moves from one site of care to another but patient information does […]