Pressure from insurers such as Aetna Inc. and WellPoint Inc. and the need to cut hospital costs are speeding a move by doctors to computer recordkeeping, said Glen Tullman, chief executive officer of Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc. Allscripts has seen a fivefold increase in the number of U.S. doctors using its electronic prescribing software, part of a "dramatic acceleration" in the use of online health records, said Tullman.
GE Healthcare has announced three initiatives to deliver healthcare information technology through collaborations with leading medical institutions. The medical institutions involved include Aspetar Hospital, Qatar Foundation, Intermountain Healthcare, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Montefiore Medical Center and the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
The International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations is scheduled for April 27-29 in Las Vegas. The conference 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, according to the conference's Web site.
Mark Vachon, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Global Diagnostic Imaging business, has announced that its diagnostic unit will reduce costs and cut jobs. Vachon said he expects sales of big-ticket imaging equipment to be down "in the mid-single digits" percentage points in the United States in 2009, compared to last year. While he declined to provide the reduction size or a time frame, Vachon said that there is "no question that, given this market, we're going to get much tighter on costs."
The Defense Department has started testing an application that allows soldiers, veterans, and their families to manage their personal health records online using programs provided by Google and Microsoft. The department's Military Health System launched the feature, called MiCare, at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA. Patients there can use either the patient-controlled health records application developed by Google, called Google Health, or Microsoft's health records application, Microsoft HealthVault, MHS representatives said.
President-elect Barack Obama has announced health information technology will be included in an economic recovery plan that is now being worked out with members of Congress. In a radio address, Obama said modernizing U.S. hospitals would be part of a major effort to finance an upgrade of the broadband infrastructure of the United States, which he said has fallen to 15th in the world in its rate of adoption. "We must ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet," Obama said, an effort he said that "won't just save jobs, it will save lives."