News
The idea of unique patient identifiers is more than a mere concept extracted from the next dystopian novel. They could very well be reality in the not-so-distant future. The question remaining, however, is whether or not the benefits of such technology outweigh constitutional privacy and patient trust concerns. Naturally, depending on whom you ask, the answer varies considerably.
From year to year, one thing that is guaranteed to happen between HIMSS annual conferences is that the health IT landscape will change, usually in dramatic fashion.
You don't get the star power of a former U.S. president, the leader of one of the country's most respected hospitals, a world renowned cardiologist, the country's health IT chief, and two highly charged and high-powered political debaters, by leaving things to chance.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has begun listening sessions to identify and understand the experience and barriers of organizations as they prepare to scale up health information exchange.
The ONC and NIH are working the EU health agencies to develop international interoperability standards, with the goal of increasing patient access to personal health information globally.
El Camino Hospital plans to add a new data warehouse as part of its broader initiative to implement LEAN process management and enhance organization-wide business intelligence.
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) announced Thursday that it is conducting its latest online ICD-10 industry progress survey.
Standards group Health Level Seven International (HL7) has formed the Clinical Quality Information Work Group. HL7 plans to offer more education to providers and the new work group will offer leadership in the development of standards artifacts and educational content to all stakeholders involved in quality measurement efforts.
There's a new app that can help caregivers and clinicians monitor the heart rate and respiratory activity of a patient; it's called SecuraFone, powered by Hermosa Beach, Calif.-based SecuraTrac.
The omnibus HIPAA Privacy and Security final rule released by HHS on Jan. 17 answered some questions, provided necessary guidance in certain areas -- but some of the thorniest issues, data breach notification among those, are still cryptic enough that lawyers and privacy officers will still face difficult judgment calls every time a laptop is lost or stolen.