Japan's government tells BusinessWeek that it has an idea for creating jobs in its healthcare sector--competing for medical tourists against Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and India. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has a plan for luring wealthy patients from Asia and Russia to Japan for advanced medical treatment. Countries such as India, Singapore, and Thailand are already a popular destination for Americans, Europeans and Japanese who are looking for specialized medical procedures but don't want to pay the high costs.
Aspect Medical Systems, Inc., announced a five-year comparative effectiveness research collaboration with Cleveland Clinic focused on improving patient outcomes following surgery. The collaboration will utilize the Clinic's electronic medical record system to identify anesthetic management practices that are associated with optimum outcomes. These practices will then be tested prospectively utilizing real-time decision support methods. The company has also signed a licensing agreement with Cleveland Clinic that will cover the intellectual property that emerges from the collaboration.
Kettering Health Network will invest at least $50 million in electronic health records, network officials announced Thursday. The network, comprised of six area hospitals, has signed with Verona, WI-based Epic Systems Corp., an electronic medical record system company, to install the eHIS system at its hospitals. The multi-year project will cost more than $50 million.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon released a report by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission calling for all Australians to have electronic health records by 2012, ZDNet Australia reports. The report endorses Deloitte's 2008 recommendations for the national e-health strategy and calls for spending Australian $1.2 billion to Australian $1.9 billion, or about $983 million to $1.56 billion, on health IT.
Patients at Barrington Family Medicine know they can count on the doctors to answer a page at midnight or on a Sunday, and that living in town, they'll even go into the office at odd times. But with the help of technology, they often don't have to.
The HITECH Act offers a massive opportunity for providers to maximize the value of data and the promise of new automation. But the industry may not be equipped to capitalize on new automation, according to a Deloitte survey, "The Time is Now: 2009 Global Life Sciences & Health Care Security Study." Data leakage is a huge threat and as healthcare regulations continue to increase, security budgets may not be able to keep pace, the report says.