Alabama is making it easier for pharmacists, doctors and law enforcement to monitor prescription drug sales and spot abuse, illegal sales and suspicious prescribing. Doctors, medical license boards and others have checked the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program database more than 30,000 times since it became functional last year. The database collects weekly information on filled prescriptions dispensed by doctors, pharmacists, dentists, optometrists and veterinarians.
Personal information about patients in Britain's free healthcare system has been lost, according to the nation's health department. It was the third time this year that a government service lost data about the public. Nine of the trusts that oversee Britain's National Health Service have acknowledged losing information about patients, an apparent violation of strict data-protection rules. The British health department said it did not have a total number of patients whose data was lost.
Outpatient clinics that perform diagnostic procedures using radioactive materials could do a better job of telling patients that they may set off radiation detectors at security checkpoints, a study shows. The information and documentation that these facilities provide to patients vary widely in quality, according to the Radiation Studies Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Medical centers are rushing to add the latest weapons against cancer--nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research. Experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation's market-based healthcare system. Critics say these medical centers are pursing the latest, most expensive treatments without much evidence of improved health, even as soaring costs add to the nation's economic burden. Nuclear particle accelerators are said to be more precise than the X-rays that are typically used for radiation therapy, with fewer side effects and potentially a higher cure rate.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has named members of two work groups that will seek consensus on the definitions and use of five common health IT terms. The Records Work Group will cover the terms electronic health record, electronic medical record and personal health record. The Networks Work Group will focus on the terms Regional Health Information Organization and Health Information Exchange.
InnerWireless, a provider of in-building wireless technology, announced that it will deploy its PanGo location management platform in the University of Michigan Health System's medical campus. This platform will enable the pharmacy department to track and monitor hundreds of boxes containing emergency drug supplies throughout its 913-bed medical campus. Pharmacy will become the first department in the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based University of Michigan Health System to use a real-time location system by incorporating PanGo into the health system's existing Cisco infrastructure.