M.L. Baker

A patent dispute that threatens to cut off some mobile executives e-mails wont affect physicians who send prescriptions to pharmacies electronically. However, headlines wailing about BlackBerrys troubles may keep some physicians from adopting the technology. Few doctors use BlackBerries for e-prescribing, largely because other types of devices generally support faster connections with office networks. Neither […]

As Medicare struggles to work out snafus behind its new drug coverage, government and business leaders are working to make sure the next big change goes smoothly. The Medicare Modernization Act requires standards for doctors to submit prescriptions to pharmacies electronically. To make sure that goes off without a hitch, the Department of Health and […]

Drug companies spend a lot of money trying to get patients attention. To tap into this cash flow, technology startup Phreesia launched this week plans to deliver targeted messages in physicians waiting rooms. Phreesia gives doctors free wireless WebPads (a modified tablet PC). Patients waiting for appointments use the device to describe their symptoms and […]

Theres a lot of scientific data going to waste. Much of it has been painstakingly gathered through timely and costly experiments and is freely available in public databases. But researchers have been hard-pressed to use existing data to ask new questions, because they lack reliable descriptions and computational tools. Now, scientists at Harvard and Stanford […]

Giant GE Healthcare has teamed up with 85-employee MobileAccess Inc. to enable hospitals to use a common infrastructure for their wireless applications, such as cell phones, pagers, public safety radio and Wi-Fi. A midsize hospital could have as many as 15 different wireless systems, including pagers, and a multihospital chain could have as many as […]

Proposed exceptions to anti-kickback laws wont be enough to allay hospitals fears about helping community physicians adopt health information technology, according to several health IT proponents and health care organizations. The public comment period for proposed changes ended this week with the American Hospital Association, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, the Health Information […]

Researchers poring over brain scans may soon have an easier time integrating that data with information about the genes and proteins that make brain cells tick. A software vendor and a nonprofit group are teaming up to create NeuroCommons.org, a free, shared repository of data and other tools to speed research on brain function and […]

Wireless pressure sensors are being used to warn doctors that a blood vessel is liable to burst. On Monday, the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center announced that it had implanted the Endosure sensor in patients who were receiving stents to protect against aortic aneurysms. The sensor, approved by the FDA last month, promises a […]

Health information technology promises better care at lower costs, but it cant fix a broken system. Giving doctors more access to computers wont, by itself, give the underinsured more access to doctors. The Department of Health and Human servcies provides a steady drumbeat of health IT projects: coordinating standards, providing seed money, laying the groundwork […]

Doctors will provide higher quality care when given financial incentives to do so, concludes a three-year study of seven so-called P4P (pay-for-performance) programs. However, its still not clear “whether the return on investment and the quality gains outweigh the financial and human effort,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the study. Pay-for-performance […]

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded four contracts to consortia that will figure out how doctors at different health care sites can share medical information. The four consortia are made of technology vendors and local healthcare groups. For the past 15 years, most health IT efforts were framed within a […]

Antibiotics cant treat the cold or the flu. Prescribed unwisely, they make bacteria harder to kill and make infections harder to treat. Still, about half the antibiotic prescriptions written in doctors offices are useless, or worse. But tools that guide doctors decisions can reduce excessive use of antibiotics, according to a study published Tuesday in […]