M.L. Baker

Recent disclosures that drug companies have suppressed results linking antidepressants to suicide have sparked outrage. Patients, scientists and politicians have called for policies to prevent drug sponsors from burying data. On Thursday, the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) is expected to announce that its member journals will only publish results for clinical studies […]

While it may seem like a new discipline, medical informatics is much older than most people realize. Back in 1977, well before most people had personal computers, plans for the third global conference on medical informatics were under way. You could argue that the discipline has since gotten stuck. The health care communitys sluggish pace […]

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Enthusiasm for e-prescribing is turning into a fervor. A new industry group has formed to promote the practice, much to the delight of the Electronic Health Initiative, a non-profit group dedicated to encouraging the use of health information technology. The national health information technology coordinator, David Brailer, includes it in his proposals. And the Centers […]

STANFORD, Calif.—Developing standards for describing biological data may not be glamorous, but the lack of standards undermines researchers productivity, said one researcher at the first meeting of the Bioinformatics Standards Committee here on Thursday. “I want to know what the fields mean and I want to know that everybody else has the same concept of […]

Physicians are taking a time-will-tell approach to a new industry consortium dedicated to accelerating electronic prescribing. Nine well-recognized entities, including high-tech and e-prescribing companies, announced Tuesday that they had banded together to educate physicians and health care payers about successful strategies in e-prescribing and its potential to improve health care. The group, which calls itself […]

In May, I exulted that some 90 percent of hospitals had signed up voluntarily to share safety data. This month, I can cheer that some 95 percent of eligible hospitals have done so. By 2005, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, plan to launch a Web site for consumers, and some of […]

Buffalo, N.Y.-based health care provider Catholic Health System last week announced a 10-year, $100 million agreement with Siemens Medical Solutions for medical imaging and information systems, with Siemens, of Melvern, Pa., guaranteeing to update the systems throughout the length of the deal. Jeff Baughan, vice president of information technology for CHS, said the agreement provides […]

While experts strongly disagree on the methodology of a new study that puts the number of deaths from medical errors at nearly 200,000, their views are surprisingly in harmony on the scope of the problem—and the solution. Health Grades Inc. released its estimate of error-related deaths last week, nearly doubling a 1999 estimate from the […]

A new report doubles the current estimate of deaths due to preventable medical errors—to 195,000—and concludes that IT would not address the causes of the deaths. The oft-cited figure of 98,000 deaths per year comes from a report by the Institute of Medicine published in 1999. The newer report uses a collection of PSIs (patient […]