EHR and practice management system vendor Greenway Medical Technologies has launched its own blog (weblog) to provide a central location for news and updated information regarding EHR industry developments. From the press release:
The blog is accessible through a link from Greenway's corporate web site, www.greenwaymedical.com.
It features a compilation of breaking news stories, updates and
analysis […]
The FDA published a white paper
written by ECRI on the automatic identification of medical devices. You
may recall calls for the FDA to require barcoding of medical devices
like was recently required for drugs (here, here and here).
Congressmen, nonprofit associations and GPOs raised a clarion call to
barcode medical devices to improve patient safety. Legislators even
directed the FDA […]
MSNBC has a great story
about the efforts hospitals are taking to care for patients in an
adverse situation. Pervasive flooding in New Orleans has cut power to
hospitals creating a need to transfer acute patients somewhere dry,
while new patients continue to come in through Emergency Departments.
Charity's backup generator was running out of diesel fuel. Nurses
hand-pumped ventilators for […]
Check out Grand Rounds at HealthyConcerns.com!
Techdirt Wireless reports that Verizon will lower unlimited EV-DO wireless data service from $80 to $60 per month. This change is rumored to be in response to Sprint, who's launching their EV-DO service
“any day now” at a cost of — you guessed it — $80 per month. Both
Verizon and Sprint networks are based on CDMA. […]
Startup Triage Wireless closed their first major round
of outside equity. This is a very interesting company targeting the
ambulatory blood pressure monitoring market. Lead investors in this
round were London based VC 3i and (almost) local firm Sanderling. Both firms specialize in biomedical startups, and both VC firms get seats on Triage Wireless' board.
The product, called the […]
Critical care units (CCUs) are an important part of any hospital. Typically, between 8% and 12% of a hospital’s beds are devoted to some form of critical care (about 3% outside the US), which consumes half of an institution’s direct patient care budget; CCUs are expensive.
A standard indicator for hospital patient flow problems are ED […]
The adoption of hospitalist programs is one of a number of proven methods to improve patient flow. Hospitals & Health Networks has a good overview on things to consider when contemplating the use of hospitalists. Here's an excerpt:
Some of the most common needs regarding service include:
Managing admissions on behalf of the physicians, which improves their […]
Baylor Health Care System signed a three-year contract to license
Galvanon Inc's MediKiosk solution at all of its affiliated facilities.
Baylor will roll out Galvanon's self-service kiosks to automate the
patient registration process at its entire network of hospitals,
primary care centers, rehabilitation clinics and ambulatory surgery
centers. The contract follows a successful pilot program at Baylor's
Sammons Cancer and Breast […]
Verizon and PatientKeeper announce
that the PatientKeeper platform can now be accessed through Verizon's
wireless network. Each wireless carrier's wireless network is somewhat
proprietary, so IP based applications must be tested (and sometimes
tweaked) to run properly. Whether this announcement means anything more
that test and validation on Verizon's network is not clear.
In other news, Sprint announced that they'd completed […]
