M.L. Baker

Allowing clinicians to report errors voluntarily likely helps prevent future errors, according to a study published recently by researchers at Johns Hopkins Childrens Center, in Baltimore, and reported in the June issue of “Quality & Safety in Healthcare.” Sources of medical errors have come under increasing scrutiny since the Institute of Medicine estimated that 100,000 […]

While members of Congress in June introduced legislation that would create nonprofit institutions charged with managing patients electronic health records for a lifetime, a separate House bill to make health information systems interoperable has stalled. Both bills encourage technology that would allow physicians at one institution to see what treatments a patient has received from […]

Biotechnology could enjoy more of the efficiency and innovation of high technology, say a group of experts working at the intersection of computation and biology. But first, researchers have to think less like scientists and more like engineers. By inserting new collections of genes into bacteria, teams of “biohackers” can make microorganisms do nifty tricks: […]

A year after Hurricane Katrina disrupted thousands of lives across the South, a coalition of health IT leaders has outlined how to help evacuees get necessary medications and better-informed care. The nonprofit Markle Foundation, a well-regarded think tank that analyzes business, logistic, and policy barriers in the adoption of health IT, on June 13 released […]

The fraction of U.S. physicians with access to health IT swelled over the past four years, but is still far from pervasive, finds a study released June 7 by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group. The group conducted surveys of thousands of physicians from 2000 to 2001 and from 2004 […]

Researchers at Stony Brook Universitys Center for Structural Biology wanted to understand how an essential HIV protein switched between two known conformations. They used computer simulation to model the transition and identified a new conformation that helps explain HIVs vulnerability to a class of drugs known as protease inhibitors. The research at the university, based […]

Doctors tell insurance companies about the care patients receive; one of the countrys largest emergency departments is finding that, with the right IT, insurance companies can return the favor. Patients seeing a doctor for the first time often omit important details. The situation is worse, and more dangerous, when these patients show up in emergency […]

In whats being hailed as an open-source initiative against a pandemic, some 20 global health organizations, universities and technology giant IBM are teaming up to figure out how computer technology can help respond to infectious disease outbreaks. As part of the Global Pandemic Initiative, launched May 15, IBM said it would contribute software technologies to […]

The United States lags far behind other countries in its adoption and funding of health IT, according to a study published in the May/June issue of Health Affairs. At the same time, the United States pays much more per person for health care than other rich countries do. While governments usually pay for health IT […]

All in the first week of May, weve been told that most big companies havent got a clue how to keep business going if an avian influenza virus, or bird flu, pandemic hits. The federal government reckons the pandemic could cost $600 billion. And confronted with the Presidents latest plan for dealing with a pandemic […]

To find drug information about heart attacks, a physician should remember to search not just for “heart attack” but also for “MI,” “infarct” and “myocardial infarction.” Automated, electronic ways to access drug information can miss or misclassify information because there are myriad medical terms. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is moving to standardize […]

Fewer hospitals and health care facilities are complying with federal laws to protect patient privacy, and more patients are refusing to sign forms to release health information, according to a survey by the American Health Information Management Association. Such trends bode ill for the development of a national electronic exchange of health data, warned Dan […]