MediVoice, LLC has formed a strategic partnership with VisionTree, a provider of interactive, web-based, patient-centered health record management and provider communication systems, to integrate and market its mobile voice-activation solution with the VisionTree Optimal Care system. Through the partnership, VisionTree customers will be able to utilize MediVoice's software platform to access the SureScripts network for e-Prescribing and e-Health management.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is trying to entice physicians to use electronic prescribing by offering incentives such as a $1,000 bonus for doing so. Blue Cross is offering the one-time cash incentive to those who meet certain criteria, including registering with a certified e-prescribing vendor and accessing medication histories for at least 20 patients in the fourth quarter of 2008. Any pharmacies not currently able to accept electronic prescriptions that become electronically enabled by the end of 2008 also will qualify for the $1,000 incentive.
Doctors, scientists, physicists, and researchers will soon see technologically advanced workspaces in two new buildings taking shape at the University of Chicago. The latest advances in the university's renewal efforts are a $375 million Center for Physical and Computational Sciences, and a $700 million New Hospital Pavilion for the University Medical Center. The pavilion will house the latest technology, such as robotic-assisted surgeries, and allow for futuristic technology yet to be created, executives say.
Although doctor or nurse bloggers might think they're anonymous, they sometimes inadvertently end up revealing their identities and, as a result, their patients', according to a study. Researchers reviewed five entries each for 271 blogs written by people who said they were a physician or a nurse, and they found that 114 of the blogs described patients. More than half of the bloggers provided enough information in their text or images to reveal their identities, and 45 of the blogs that described interactions with individual patients included enough information for them to identify their doctors or themselves. Three blogs went so far to show recognizable photos of patients.
Daytona Beach, FL-based Halifax Health Medical Center has shown two surgical procedures live over the Internet since April, and it plans to air a third operation in the fall. The center's public-relations manager said the broadcasts help educate people who might undergo the procedures and give patients' family and loved ones a close look at the technology and techniques used at the facility. They also help educate medical students, professors, physicians, and the general public while showcasing the hospital's talents, programs, and technology, officials say.
Zimmer Holdings recently announced it was suspending sales of its metal hip socket replacement called the Durom cup until it trained doctors how best to implant it. The company said a “low” percentage of the 13,000 patients who got the socket would need replacements, but some doctors fear the number could reach into the hundreds. If those patients lived in other countries where artificial joints were tracked by national databases, including Australia and Britain, many might have been spared that risk. But the United States lacks such a joint registry national database that tracks how patients with artificial hips and knees fare.