M.L. Baker

WASHINGTON—At a panel about how information access could improve health care, Carol Kovac, general manager of IBM Healthcare, repeated a joke: “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from,” she said. The point is that health care IT has a surfeit of standards, and many of them overlap and […]

WASHINGTON—Health researchers are rewarded for hoarding data as opposed to sharing it, concluded experts on a panel on intellectual property and information access in the genetic age. The panel was part of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences larger conference, which explores how scientific issues impact society, here this week. Alan Herbert, a […]

President Bushs science advisor and a prominent Democratic Member of Congress sparred publicly this week about the administrations stance on computer models. Representative Henry Waxman accused the administration of invoking scientific uncertainty to discredit evidence counter to its policies. John Marburger, science advisor to the president, responded that the computer models used to make predictions […]

In a recent column, I wrote about my experiences using a series of different Web tools to find the most important advances in brain-machine interfaces. I concluded that the single best resource was not electronic at all, but rather a phone call to a flesh-and-blood expert. In response, a few people e-mailed me with tips […]

Two of the nations largest groups of outpatient doctors offices are implementing EMR systems. Hill Physicians, Inc. announced this week that it will roll out integrated electronic medical records for its 2,600 providers across California. Late last year, the San Francisco-based Brown and Toland Medical Group announced that it would do the same for its […]

Abuses to privacy are inherent in a national health information network. But if configured correctly, an electronic system might actually prevent practices that go largely unnoticed, and so unprotected, in the current system. In fact, technology used to prevent individuals from sharing music and movies could also keep businesses and employers from storing patient information. […]

Patients care may be adversely affected by missing information in as many as 220 million patient visits each year, according to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association this week. Electronic medical records alleviate but do not solve the problem. Though missing information is blamed in about 16 percent of medical […]

Less than a year after the appointment of a health IT czar and only a month into 2005, health IT has seen its share of good news. Response to health IT czar David Brailers request for feedback on his national health information network has been enthusiastic. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information […]

More than twice as many medical groups are using EHRs than were using them two years ago, according to a survey released this week by MGMA (Medical Group Management Association). Still, only about 30 percent medical groups have any form of electronic health records system. That fraction falls to 20 percent if the definition of […]

A national system for electronic health information could save as much as $78 billion dollars a year, or about 5 percent of current health care spending, according to a study by the Center for Information Technology Leadership, a nonprofit research group focused on health care. But about half of that value will be lost if […]

As someone who spends the majority of her time hunting down information, often online, I figured I needed to boost my Internet savvy. So I decided to consciously compare what different Web resources found for me while I hunted down information for a recent project—technologies that allow brain signals to control machines. For the task, […]

Outpatient and hospital physicians have markedly different preferences when it comes to mobile health devices, but both groups agree that currently available products are inadequate, according to a new report by the Spyglass Consulting Group. Over half of the physicians interviewed said PDA (personal digital assistant) screen size and data entry methods limit its use […]