Stacy Lawrence

In an effort to make good on its commitment to the health care industry to be present from “lab to bedside,” Microsoft announced another series of partnerships aiming at the health care industry. At the World Health Care Congress from April 17 to 19, Microsoft released its vision for “knowledge driven health plans” in conjunction […]

An overview of the scientific studies published in the last few years concludes that large health care institutions have relatively successfully incorporated health IT, while small physician offices continue to lag. The AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, recently released a report, here in […]

Initial system architecture and policy recommendations for regional health information exchanges were released recently by a public-private cooperative group. In an effort to standardize the exchange of health information, Connecting for Health, a public-private collaborative of more than 100 organizations, recently released technical specifications and policy guidelines. Dubbed the “Common Framework,” the set of specifications […]

Microsoft on April 4 announced the formation of the BioIT Alliance, a cross-industry group created to enhance the ability to use and share biomedical data, at the Life Sciences Conference and Expo in Boston. The working group will take on a series of “proof-of-concept” projects to understand how Microsofts platforms can enhance the integration of […]

At the end of April, the Food and Drug Administration will officially require drug makers and marketers to have a bar code on all drugs sold to American hospitals. And although the biopharmaceutical companies may be starting to achieve compliance, hospitals arent remotely equipped to use the bar-coded data. In February 2004, the FDA issued […]

When emergency medical technicians transmit electrocardiograms directly to a cardiologists handheld device, heart attack patients can potentially receive direct clot removal in half the usual time. Thats what cardiologists at Duke University Medical Center and NorthEast Medical Center in Concord, N.C., found in a recent study. Cutting this time is critical because the sooner a […]

In an effort to make baseline health care quality statistics more widely available to health care facilities, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, recently launched an interactive online tool. The new State Snapshot Web tool is based on the 2005 National Healthcare Quality Report […]

For the first time, reportedly, researchers have successfully tested an implantable microchip device that is activated wirelessly to deliver controlled doses of drugs into the body over a prolonged period of time. The technology comes from MicroChips, a privately held company specializing in implantable drug delivery and biosensors. The results of the study were described […]

Records of cancer patients nationwide may soon be networked for researchers to access, and now a new study has found a way to de-identify individual records, making the project more feasible. De-identifying electronic medical records so they can be used for research purposes is a must for health care institutions anxious to remain compliant with […]

With the United States and countries around the world facing exploding health care costs, Intel CEO Craig Barrett argues that implementing health IT is a must to creating a workable health care system in his keynote at the annual Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society conference. As U.S. health care costs continue to expand from […]

This may be a breakthrough year for electronic medical records at hospitals. Thats according a survey of more than 200 health care executives, mostly CIOs, at U.S. hospitals released this week by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society at its annual conference. Almost one-quarter of hospital leaders surveyed reported that their organizations have a […]

In 2004, President George W. Bush declared that widespread electronic health record systems and networks would be up and running in the United States within a decade. But according to a recent survey of health care provider organizations released Feb. 13 by Oracle, 38 percent are skeptical that that ambitious goal will be met. This […]