M.L. Baker

A robot guided by images from a 3-D ultrasound scanner can go to the right spots in a simulated surgery and promises to give surgeons a better picture of organs they are operating on, according to a new study in an engineering journal. Among other applications, surgeons could use the 3-D scanner to spot potential […]

Doctors and nurses are loading up on multiple communications devices, none of them adequate to their needs, concludes a report by Spyglass Consulting Group. According to the report, nearly 70 percent of interviewed physicians and nurses carry two or more communications devices, and some clinicians wear “batman utility belts” that carry a few pounds of […]

Body scans performed by experts using remote control software on personal computers can produce better quality images than those obtained by on-site operators, according to a study published in the November issue of the journal Radiology. Patients, unfortunately, still need to visit the hospital to get strapped into sophisticated scanning equipment. Technologists must also be […]

A year after a federal advisory committee recommended how health information could be shared, the country has moved a long way to harmonizing standards and relaxing regulations that barred hospitals from promoting health IT, but it still needs to implement measures to protect patients information. In October 2005, a commission on systemic interoperability laid out […]

Depressed people can have a hard-enough time getting out of the house to get treatment. Its even worse for those who live far away from treatment centers. Now, researchers at The Australian National University have found that brief Internet-based interventions can have long-term benefits that may be as effective as visiting psychotherapists. Researchers at ANU, […]

Three years after the deadline for compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to protect patients health information, over a fifth of health care providers and over a tenth of payers say they are not meeting the standards. Overall, compliance with HIPAA requirements is lackluster, with the number of health care providers saying […]

Under a new program from the Centers of Medicaid and Medicare, doctors in solo and small medical practices will soon be eligible for up to $10,000 more a year—if they can demonstrate that their performance is up to snuff. Among other criteria, doctors will be evaluated for the percentage of diabetic patients whose glucose is […]

Just under one in four community physicians are using electronic health records; fewer than one in 10 are using EHRs that perform at least four functions deemed critical by the Institute of Medicine. Thats according to a new study specially commissioned to provide a reliable baseline to assess future IT adoption. Although many surveys on […]

The personal data of Medicare patients is at risk because Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not held its network contractor to its own security standards, according to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO concluded that information on the network could be disclosed without authorization and that vulnerabilities could be […]

The low adoption of electronic medical records and e-prescribing is well known. Now, a new study has worse news: most physicians do not use inexpensive, widely accessible IT tools in their practice. The study, to be published in November in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, finds that fewer than 4 percent of physicians e-mail […]

Researchers at MIT and Harvard have released a public database that they hope will be the seed of a new human genome project, one that lets researchers find potential treatments for disease in a specialized search engine. Both diseases and drugs have so-called genetic signatures—sets of genes known to be turned on or off, up […]

A survey finds that local, state and regional initiatives for exchanging health information have matured significantly since a similar survey conducted in 2005, but most efforts are still in the planning stages. Of 165 initiatives identified across the United States, 27 percent of respondents identified themselves in the implementation stage and 16 percent said the […]