Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital has announced plans to collect blood samples for genetic analysis from all consenting patients and then feed that information into a large database, allowing scientists to analyze patients' genomes alongside detailed medical histories. The project aims to take advantage of the immense amount of patient information available in the hospital's electronic medical-record system, and could also serve as a model for how to incorporate genomic information into both electronic medical records and clinical care.
New Jersey lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit the use of health IT products that are not certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare IT. Under the bill, anyone caught selling or distributing such a product could be fined up to $5,000 per violation.
The New Jersey bill would affect all healthcare providers in the state.
General Electric Co. said its GE Capital division will make no-interest loans to hospitals and healthcare providers that purchase GE's healthcare information technology. GE said it expects to offer $100 million in interim financing to hospitals and healthcare providers for projects that are expected to qualify for funds from the economic-stimulus package.
A former Cedars-Sinai Medical Center employee was sentenced to four years, eight months in prison after pleading guilty today to stealing patient information to defraud insurance companies of $354,000. The hospital had sent letters in December to more than 1,000 patients, warning them that their personal information had been found during a search of the home of James Allen Wilson, who worked in the billing department at the Los Angeles facility between 2003 and 2007.
Mobile devices, doctor review sites, and blogs are changing the way millions of health consumers find and share find health information, according to a new survey released by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation. Nearly 60% of respondents said they have consulted blog comments, hospital reviews and doctor reviews, listened to podcasts about healthcare and signed up to receive updates about health or medical issues. And 20% have posted comments, reviews, photos, audio or video online related to healthcare.
A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 61% of Americans go online for health information, and the majority of them have turned to user-generated health information. But a scan through peer-reviewed journals reveals only a handful of articles, and no evidence-based guidelines, to guide doctors on the use of social media, says New York Times columnist Pauline W. Chen, MD. It is unclear whether the online engagement "adds to or detracts from a patient-doctor relationship, and clinicians are unsure about what constitutes good standards of care and professional responsibility on these platforms," Chen says.