A 100-bed multi-speciality hospital currently in construction in Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi, will be completed by the end of next year. The facility will be operated by German General Hospital and staffed by German doctors and nurses. According to officials, approximately 100,000 people travel from the UAE to Germany each year for medical treatment. This new facility will allow those in Abu Dhabi and surrounding areas to receive the same German medical care without traveling overseas.
The International Conference on IT in Asia is an international forum run by the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. The conference reflects the increasing focus on issues concerned with ICTs in developing countries, according to a release, and the sixth International Conference on Information Technology is scheduled for July 6-9.
Medical imagins solutions provider Merge Healthcare has announced the release of eFilm Workstation 3.1, which adds Windows Vista support, faster load times, and accelerated workflow communication to its diagnostic review software, according to a release.
Government officials in India are now offering financial assistance to hospital representatives and tour operators who work with foreign patients, as a way of promoting the country as a medical tourism destination. The Indian Ministry of Tourism will also provide financial aid to hospital representatives to attend global medical fairs and events that showcase the country.
Money included in the $787 billion federal economic stimulus package will allow Royal Oaks, MI-based Beaumont Hospitals to expand a new electronic medical records system to at least 300 of its affiliated physicians by year's end. Beaumont launched its centralized EMR system at its Grosse Pointe hospital last year and at its Royal Oak and Troy hospitals on Feb. 1. The system, which is now in place with 136 affiliated physicians, is expected to streamline a complex web of mostly paper-based record-keeping, improve patients safety and lower costs. "The opportunity for us in the stimulus package is to be able to more quickly push this out to the 3,000 doctors that serve our patients," said Beaumont CEO Ken Matzick.
Bradley Erickson, MD, PhD, from the Mayo Clinic discusses how some providers are reexamining healthcare IT projects that have been deferred now that the economic stimulus has been passed. He also says now is the time to get to begin evaluating how many jobs IT projects create, assessing the healthcare quality impact, and totaling costs in anticipation of government requests for grant applications.