The $19 billion in Congress's economic stimulus package to bring America's healthcare records into the electronic age is an opportunity for information technology firms seeking to build market share in a still-young industry. Although the federal government set a goal five years ago of creating an electronic health record for every American by 2014, the effort has lagged. Roadblocks include concerns over lack of universal protocols for collecting data as well as rules that establish how, with whom and under what circumstances the data can be shared. Many healthcare providers fear liability if private information gets into the wrong hands. Embedded in all these issues is the cost, an estimated $150 billion, which has proven to be a significant barrier to that 2014 target.
Medicine and health are among the most popular topics for Web surfers, but an Internet entrepreneur says the current offerings are inadequate. James Currier has developed Medpedia, a free online medical encyclopedia that addresses what he views as the sector?s shortcomings. However, unlike Wookieepedia, Lostpedia and most social encyclopedias, only trained professionals will be able to write and edit pages on the Medpedia Web site, and all contributors will have individual author pages detailing their qualifications and backgrounds.
The University of California-Davis Health Informatics Program has scheduled its 3rd Annual Health Informatics Conference, with this year's theme being "Innovations in Informatics." The conference will be held at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA, on March 7, 2009. Registration is now open.
Pharmaceutical students at Keele University in England are using a "virtual patient" to help in their training. Students interact with computer-generated characters to gain experience in effective communication and decision-making. Learners talk with the "patient" via voice recognition technology or by typing questions into a standard computer interface and the "patient" responds verbally or with a range of non-verbal gestures to indicate emotions such as pain, stress, or anxiety. At the end of the session, the "patient" gives feedback to the trainee about their performance.
Efforts to use information technology to improve U.S. healthcare will fall short of the potential seen by health leaders and could even set back the cause, according to a report from the National Research Council. A committee of academic and industry experts found the information systems at eight U.S. medical centers noted for leadership in information technology failed to provide timely, efficient, safe and patient-centered care.
Standardized patient health insurance identification cards got a nod of approval from Humana Inc., one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. Humana is the first company in the industry to publicly pledge its support to the Medical Group Management Association Project SwipeIT. The project is an industry-wide initiative to advance the adoption of standardized patient health insurance ID cards containing machine-readable information.