M.L. Baker

Congress has charged a new commission with developing a plan to make health care IT systems work together. President Bush last week appointed Scott Wallace, head of the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, to chair the commission. eWEEK.com spoke with Wallace as he headed out to Washington, D.C., for the commissions first meeting. The […]

How does a field define its essence, when being interdisciplinary is essential? Could doing so make it less powerful? Those are central questions for informatics, the art of using information and information technology to uncover relationships and to optimize decisions. “Its not really just about technology; its about how people use information and how they […]

At a conference of heath care executives on Monday, the scion of IT and pharmaceutical giants showed off the latest version of its practice and clinical management system, specifically geared toward small physician offices. The next-generation system from Amicore—founded in 2001 by Microsoft Corp., IBM and Pfizer Inc.—employs Microsofts .Net tools, is designed specifically for […]

As federal agencies develop strategies to create an integrated, nationwide system for electronic medical records, a small, private company is betting that individuals, or their employers, will pay for a less-sophisticated system thats ready today. REDmedic Inc., of San Jose, Calif., announced Monday its “consumer to caregiver” service: Members can manage and store information over […]

New graduate students have been arriving at informatics programs all across the country this week. The programs vary within and between schools, but most offer a doctoral track, a couple of flavors of masters programs, and a certificate program or two. Some masters and many certificate programs can be completed online. “We need more of […]

The lead editorial in a leading medical journal called for genomic data on pathogens to remain widely available, saying the benefits of promoting medical research far outweigh the risks of helping bioterrorists. It lauded the same conclusion by a panel of the U.S. National Academies of Science and Engineering. /zimages/6/28571.gifTo read a summary of the […]

“There are very few, if any, altruistic standards. Standards that take hold take hold because there are economic drivers for that to happen.” Thats the view of Robert Seliger, chair of a new HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management Systems Society) steering committee. The committee is charged with finding ways to make health information systems more capable […]

Three-quarters of health IT professionals got raises last year, according to a survey released Thursday by HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society), a professional organization. The average salary for survey respondents was $96,568, up from $91,268 in a similar 2002 survey. On average, health IT respondents at consulting firms had the biggest salaries ($116,696) […]

A new report from the Institute of Medicine blames much of the health care systems inadequacies on fragmentation and says IT can play a key role in creating a more integrated, patient-centric approach. But the IT infrastructure is fragmented itself, stymieing efforts to improve patient care. The report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm Summit: A Focus […]

If DNA code can hold the information for making an entire person, surely it can do the same for an integrated medical record? Such is the reasoning of the developers of the Genomic Messaging System. Acknowledging that the project began “when the DNA-augmented patient record seemed to many to be mere science fiction,” scientists Barry […]