M.L. Baker

Giant GE Healthcare has teamed up with 85-employee MobileAccess Inc. to enable hospitals to use a common infrastructure for their wireless applications, such as cell phones, pagers, public safety radio and Wi-Fi. A midsize hospital could have as many as 15 different wireless systems, including pagers, and a multihospital chain could have as many as […]

Proposed exceptions to anti-kickback laws wont be enough to allay hospitals fears about helping community physicians adopt health information technology, according to several health IT proponents and health care organizations. The public comment period for proposed changes ended this week with the American Hospital Association, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, the Health Information […]

Researchers poring over brain scans may soon have an easier time integrating that data with information about the genes and proteins that make brain cells tick. A software vendor and a nonprofit group are teaming up to create NeuroCommons.org, a free, shared repository of data and other tools to speed research on brain function and […]

Wireless pressure sensors are being used to warn doctors that a blood vessel is liable to burst. On Monday, the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center announced that it had implanted the Endosure sensor in patients who were receiving stents to protect against aortic aneurysms. The sensor, approved by the FDA last month, promises a […]

Health information technology promises better care at lower costs, but it cant fix a broken system. Giving doctors more access to computers wont, by itself, give the underinsured more access to doctors. The Department of Health and Human servcies provides a steady drumbeat of health IT projects: coordinating standards, providing seed money, laying the groundwork […]

Doctors will provide higher quality care when given financial incentives to do so, concludes a three-year study of seven so-called P4P (pay-for-performance) programs. However, its still not clear “whether the return on investment and the quality gains outweigh the financial and human effort,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the study. Pay-for-performance […]

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded four contracts to consortia that will figure out how doctors at different health care sites can share medical information. The four consortia are made of technology vendors and local healthcare groups. For the past 15 years, most health IT efforts were framed within a […]

Antibiotics cant treat the cold or the flu. Prescribed unwisely, they make bacteria harder to kill and make infections harder to treat. Still, about half the antibiotic prescriptions written in doctors offices are useless, or worse. But tools that guide doctors decisions can reduce excessive use of antibiotics, according to a study published Tuesday in […]

Web surfers who type “migraine” or “chronic headaches” into search engines may soon find themselves facing a solicitation from the Federal Drug Administration. As lawsuits move through the courts about the role of pain-reliever Vioxx in heart attacks, the FDA is considering whether the Internet can be used to see if drugs are prescribed safely. […]

Health information technology legislation is swirling around Capitol Hill this week, and theres no shortage of recommendations of how it should be done. Privacy advocacy groups began circulating a petition Thursday to bar employers from viewing patients health information and giving patients control over who can see what medical information. The heads of the two […]