Stacy Lawrence

With rapidly evolving health care information technology, mounting evidence of quality, safety and efficiency benefits, and a presidential political imperative, the market for health care IT in the United States is on track to grow by two-thirds by 2009. Thats according to a newly released study by market research firm Kalorma Information. Although largely untapped […]

Almost three-quarters of Americans surveyed in a study sponsored by the health care-oriented non-profit Markle Foundation say they favor the establishment of a nationwide electronic information exchange that would allow a patients health information to be shared with authorized individuals via the Internet. However, ensuring patient privacy and control over their records is perceived as […]

America Online Inc. co-founder Steve Case has a new project: a consumer-oriented health care company called the Revolution Health Group. The board of directors of the new company, originally announced in July, includes several heavyweights, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Carly Fiorina. In […]

Just as Hurricane Rita threatens the Gulf Coast, a health-care site has been launched today to allow medical professionals access to the prescription medical records of some of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees now scattered throughout the nation. Located at KatrinaHealth.org, the online site will give authorized health professionals and pharmacies access to evacuees medication and […]

Instituting electronic health records is an expensive proposition, especially for small physician practices. And few of these practices are adopting EMRs, hindered by costs and concerns about the technology. But one of a series of new studies in the September/October issue of the journal Health Affairs addressing the adoption of health information technology suggests that […]

Health insurers have driven much of the automation currently existing in the health care system, motivated by the need to ensure profitability and to be in compliance with HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. For most insurers, claims, customer service and enrollment information are already largely automated. Still, many of these executives […]

In a landmark paper released in the August issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, a panel of experts determined a model for a national health information network in the United States and created a cost estimate for the project. The estimate aims for a five-year time frame, an even more aggressive timeline than the […]

A recent study by industry consultancy Accenture found that about two-thirds of doctors and one-third of consumers have become more concerned about the safety of prescription medications since the recent removal from the market of popular pain relievers known as COX-2 inhibitors. The survey also found that the vast majority of physicians and consumers believe […]

The Thai government has launched the Thailand Center of Excellence for Life Sciences Pharmacogenomics Project, in collaboration with Oracle, to gather and unify health records electronically. The project involves the development of a large-scale database of unified electronic health records and is intended to provide safer and more effective medications as well as reduced health […]

A report recently released by the HSC (Center for Studying Health System Change), a nonpartisan policy research organization, revealed that a majority of Medicare fee-for-service outpatient visits were to physicians without significant information technology support for patient care. The study linked Medicare claims data to the nationally representative physician survey conducted by HSC. Researchers found […]