The personal information of more than 200,000 visitors to Miami-based Jackson Memorial Hospital over an 11-month period was on a hard drive that has been stolen, the hospital announced. Copies of the drivers' licenses of visitors from May 2007 through March 2008 were on a work station hard drive that vanished from a data center. Hospital officials recommended that visitors during that period place a fraud alert with a credit bureau. No Social Security numbers or financial information was on the missing hard drive, said Dennis Proul, the hospital's chief information officer.
David Blumenthal, MD, a former Harvard Medical School professor who has advised Sen. Edward Kennedy and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, will lead health information technology efforts for the Obama administration. The Health and Human Services Department announced the selection of Blumenthal as national coordinator for health information technology in a news release. Blumenthal was also a senior adviser to President Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
A couple of years ago, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies released studies that found at least 1.5 million people are hurt by medication mistakes every year in the United States, costing hospitals about $3.5 billion in additional treatment expenses. But technology companies claim to have a means of lowering these figures, and it's called Business Rule Management System, or BRMS. More and more, companies are looking to inject this type of technology deeper into their business computing systems. A recent example of one successful embrace of BRMS comes from Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
More physicians are embracing technological advances, such as electronic medical records, but most still consider them clunky and unresponsive to their needs, according to a recent survey by the American College of Physician Executives. Some doctors embrace the new measures, but a much larger number viewed healthcare technology as frustrating and difficult to use.
Large managed-care groups like Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Cooperative are increasingly using electronic medical-record systems to help get patients to take better care of themselves. The trend, known as information therapy, involves delivering reliable health information directly to patients to help them manage their conditions and make treatment choices. Health plans also are offering online self-management programs and virtual coaching sessions for a wide range of health issues.
The International Conference on Information Technology—New Generations is an annual event focusing on state of the art technologies pertaining to digital information and communications. The conference features keynote speakers, the best student award, poster award, service award and a technical open panel, and workshops/exhibits from industry, government and academia.