M.L. Baker

Dr. David Brailer, who resigned April 19 as national coordinator of health IT, told reporters that the next coordinators job will not be to establish a vision but to keep a process moving forward. Brailer, who is chairing the search for his successor, said a replacement will likely not be in place until the end […]

The outgoing health IT czar, David Brailer, said April 24, in Washington, that making sure health care information follows patients as they receive care from different providers should be one of the governments chief goals. “Everybodys connected but nobody is sharing,” he said. “Thats the natural consequence without federal intervention,” and one of his two […]

The ever-traveling, tireless Health Information Technology Coordinator David Brailer has resigned, the Department of Health and Human Services announced April 21. The announcement of the creation of Brailers position, almost exactly two years ago, has been widely hailed by vendors, health care providers and health care payers as spurring investment in health IT. His office […]

About a dozen health care bloggers have come together on one site to contribute content about a variety of health IT topics. The new blog, called HealthNex, is sponsored by IBM. HealthNex producer and IBM spokesperson Jack Mason said the overall goal is to turn “individual blogs into a collaboration confederation.” A more tangible—and immediate […]

Sam Burgiss, former head of the University of Tennessee Telehealth Network, remembers how videoconferencing changed one patients life. He lived alone and had congestive heart failure. Every quarter, hed spend several days in the hospital, but, in 1998, nurses started monitoring him through videoconferencing. Through remote monitoring equipment, blood cuffs, scales and patients themselves can […]

Dell employees will soon have personal health records that use insurance claims to automatically fill in information about prescriptions, doctor visits and medical conditions. The PC manufacturer said the service will help employees take charge of their own health, and make better decisions about how to access health care. The joint effort between WebMD and […]

Hospitals could save $1 million to $10 million per institution per year if it didnt take so much work to get money from insurance companies, according to a survey of executives at health care providers and insurance companies released by PNC Financial Services Group. Federal standards to exchange information electronically could largely eliminate these costs, […]

Community hospitals and family physicians in rural and suburban Pennsylvania have taken up a plan to make sure a patients general practitioner knows what treatment the patient received in the hospital, and vice versa. Medical errors often occur during handoffs, when a patient moves from one site of care to another but patient information does […]

When brought into the exam room, computers act as a kind of third member in the relationship between doctor and patient, concludes a study published in Annals of Family Medicine. Whether the computer enhances or weakens the relationship depends both on how easy it is to use and how skilled physicians are in making use […]

In the wake of large-scale disasters like hurricane Katrina, recovery efforts can take weeks, and tracking human corpses becomes both technically and logistically challenging. Technically, because it may take months between the initial sighting of a corpse and final internment, during which time the body may move multiple times and begin to disintegrate. And logistically […]

Patients and doctors hunting for information about marketed and experimental therapies should now have an easier time, according to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations. On March 22, IFPMA launched an Internet search engine that finds information from a collection of databases and allows searchers to input criteria in five languages. Both medicines […]

A new report released by First Consulting Group predicts that health insurers are using health IT to expand their influence over doctors and patients. Increasingly, health plans will use the Internet to reach out to patients directly with tips for staying healthy and keeping costs down. Additionally, health plans help health care providers acquire technology […]