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Managing mobility
Date: Sep 21, 2009
Verizon is targeting enterprise users with a new offering designed to manage multiple mobile devices, usage plans and applications across multiple carriers around the globe. While many large businesses and government offices will likely benefit from such a service bundling, healthcare's increasingly mobile workforces--spurred on by the growing need for mobility at the point of care--might stand to gain the most from the company's new managed mobility solutions.
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Building a better RTLS tag
Date: Sep 18, 2009
Could the introduction of a single-use RTLS patient tag yield significant improvements to hospital workflow efficiencies, or is Sonitor's new P-Tag more of a convenience add-on for overworked staff? Rolled out in late August, the outer shell-cased active ultrasound wristband tag weighs in under an ounce, doesn't require cleaning, and offers a core that can be used over and over again.
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Healthcare projects creating health IT jobs?
Date: Sep 17, 2009
The long-awaited $20 billion "down payment" slated for health IT won't kick in until 2011, but it's an exciting time nevertheless for healthcare organizations eyeing new IT projects. One recent survey finds healthcare companies are allocating 30 percent of their IT budgets to new projects, with 70 percent slated for ongoing IT operations. With mobile point-of-care initiatives garnering increasing attention at hospitals, it's encouraging to know healthcare remains one of the few key industries likely to boast job growth over the short term. But will industry growth necessarily translate into health IT jobs?
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Health reform: Cutting costs vs. cost-cutting
Date: Sep 16, 2009
National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said on Monday that the stimulus package should encourage researchers to study the efficacy of health IT tools in different health care provider settings. As if on cue, WebMD Health News ran a report on Tuesday, reminding us that the cost of job-based health insurance continued to take a bigger bite from workers and employers this year, rising 5 percent for family coverage. This Sunday, TV's favorite president will make not one, not two, but five separate televised appearances--ABC News' “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” CNN's “State of the Nation”, CBS's “Face the Nation”, NBC's “Meet the Press” and Univision's “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos"--to press his health reform agenda. While pretty much everyone agrees on the need to cut healthcare costs, the question remains as to whether or not the hotly contested health reform bill--H.R. 3200--can deliver on its many promises without further bankrupting the nation.
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Mobile healthcare app wins innovation award
Date: Sep 15, 2009
DataDyne.org, a Washington-based nonprofit, is among the organizations spotlighted in The Wall Street Journal's 2009 Technology Innovation Awards. The company and its co-founder, Joel Selanikio, won in the health IT category for EpiSurveyor, free software for mobile devices designed to help health officials in developing countries collect health information.
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Joint venture targets healthcare with mobile medical info access
Date: Sep 14, 2009
A licensing deal between two technology vendors aims to make it easier for health care providers and consumers to access medical information using their smartphones. Under terms of the agreement, Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Health Matrix has engaged GetFugu, located in San Francisco, to deploy its suite of health care solutions through GetFugu's interactive platform.
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Wireless app developer adds HL7 interfaces
Date: Sep 11, 2009
New York-based pMDsoft, a developer of wireless applications that help physicians automate their practices from point-of-care through reimbursement, has completed over a dozen more HL7 interfaces with some of healthcare's most popular software systems. Company officials are saying their interface engine has allowed pMDsoft to integrate seamlessly with its customers' existing software infrastructure, eliminating data entry and increasing the accuracy of their claims. In fact, the variety of different interfaces available may exceed the limits of charge capture, allowing pMDsoft to act as an EMR front-end, a mobile practice management system, or a gateway to the local hospital.
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Henry Ford Health System commits to RPM expansion
Date: Sep 10, 2009
In just six months, device-free patient-monitoring technology has enabled the Henry Ford Health System's Patient-Centered Team Care program to reduce expected hospital admissions for enrolled heart failure patients by 36 percent. According to a Healthcare IT News report, the Detroit-based nonprofit healthcare system first began using the technology--called Tel-Assurance--in July 2008 as part of its patient-centered medical home model. Now, Henry Ford Health System plans to expand the program organization-wide.
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System memory, Linux OS define Nokia's new tablet
Date: Sep 09, 2009
Forget the lackluster uptake of the Nokia N97 smartphone or, for that matter, the Sept. 2 launch of the not-much-smaller N97 mini. Sure, the N97 mini made a splash at the Nokia World 2009 show in Stuttgart, Germany earlier this month with its ability to run new software that adds improvements to the user interface--more home-screen widgets and flick scrolling, as well as more social networking tools--but it's Nokia's latest Internet tablet that's most likely to put the world's number-one cell phone maker back in the game with the new leaders of the mobile market.
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Acquisition anticipates launch of automated blood collection system
Date: Sep 08, 2009
Global blood management specialist Haemonetics Corp. has acquired the blood collection and processing business of Tucson, Ariz.-based Engineering and Research Associates Inc. (SEBRA) in a cash deal valued at $12.5 million. By adding SEBRA's principal products--radio frequency (RF) tube sealers, whole blood collection devices, and mobile collection and ancillary equipment--Haemonetics hopes to expand its footprint in the whole blood collection market prior to its launch of an automated whole blood collection system in late fiscal 2011.
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Recent Posts
RFID system finds support
Pittsburgh-based ClearCount Medical Solutions has capped its latest round of funding at $5 million, which should go a long way towards driving market penetration and R&D for the SmartSponge and SmartWand systems. These solutions for hospital patient safety applications use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and chips embedded in sponges to enable surgeons and nurses to detect and count sponges during operations. Read More
Date: Sep 02, 2010
Sutter Health banks on mobile app
The second largest healthcare system in Northern California has tapped the iTriage mobile app in a move to keep local patients supplied with data about doctors and nearby hospitals. Sutter Health, which spans 24 hospitals and a network of 4,700 physicians, hopes its patients will turn to the free download to view information such as a doctor's board certification or practice specialty, hours and office addresses, languages spoken, medical training and degrees, affiliations and referral networks, whether he or she accepts new patients, and what health plans are accepted. Read More
Date: Sep 01, 2010
Marketing deal to extend AirStrip OB reach
A collaboration between Alere Health and mobile medical software developer AirStrip Technologies should go a long way towards extending the reach of AirStrip OB software. Beginning Sept. 1, the new marketing agreement calls for Alere, through its Women & Children's Health division, to begin offering AirStrip OB to its healthcare provider client base in the U.S. Read More
Date: Aug 31, 2010
The numbers favor 'mPHRs'
With 50 percent of consumers saying they want a personal monitoring device prompting them to make improvements in their health, could a marriage between mobile devices and personal health records completely change the way health care is delivered in the United States? It can and it will, according to a brief issued by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Read More
Date: Aug 30, 2010
Pittsburgh-based ClearCount Medical Solutions has capped its latest round of funding at $5 million, which should go a long way towards driving market penetration and R&D for the SmartSponge and SmartWand systems. These solutions for hospital patient safety applications use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and chips embedded in sponges to enable surgeons and nurses to detect and count sponges during operations. Read More
Date: Sep 02, 2010
Sutter Health banks on mobile app
The second largest healthcare system in Northern California has tapped the iTriage mobile app in a move to keep local patients supplied with data about doctors and nearby hospitals. Sutter Health, which spans 24 hospitals and a network of 4,700 physicians, hopes its patients will turn to the free download to view information such as a doctor's board certification or practice specialty, hours and office addresses, languages spoken, medical training and degrees, affiliations and referral networks, whether he or she accepts new patients, and what health plans are accepted. Read More
Date: Sep 01, 2010
Marketing deal to extend AirStrip OB reach
A collaboration between Alere Health and mobile medical software developer AirStrip Technologies should go a long way towards extending the reach of AirStrip OB software. Beginning Sept. 1, the new marketing agreement calls for Alere, through its Women & Children's Health division, to begin offering AirStrip OB to its healthcare provider client base in the U.S. Read More
Date: Aug 31, 2010
The numbers favor 'mPHRs'
With 50 percent of consumers saying they want a personal monitoring device prompting them to make improvements in their health, could a marriage between mobile devices and personal health records completely change the way health care is delivered in the United States? It can and it will, according to a brief issued by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Read More
Date: Aug 30, 2010
