News

The sector lags behind others, and many facets of healthcare and HIT are ripe for improvement, but there are bright spots and the people, policy, technology, along with the progress already made point toward a promising future.

Sometime in the next couple months, pending regulatory clearance, Caradigm – the new health IT company launched this past December by Microsoft and GE Healthcare – will get down to business. By combining GE's clinical applications with Microsoft's intelligence platform, officials say the new firm intends to help bring about, on a global scale, “a paradigm shift in the delivery of care."

Lack of staffing resources was cited as the most significant barrier to implementing IT, according to the 2012 HIMSS Leadership Survey, which was released last month at HIMSS12.

The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer, working with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, has launched a Privacy & Security Mobile Device project.

With mobile technology evolving every few months, keeping up with the devices' changing role in the workplace can be tough. Even though their effectiveness is being debated, bring your own device (BYOD) programs are popping up left and right, offering employees the comfort and ease of having their personal mobile devices in the office. Randy DeLorenzo helps outline six keys to developing a BYOD program for healthcare.

Lisa Gallagher, HIMSS senior director of privacy and security, isn't particularly optimistic about providers' ability to prove patient data is safe. Asked to assign a letter grade to the security situation in U.S. hospitals, she says, "probably a C."

It's no longer enough for an infant's pajamas to simply keep the little bundle of joy warm and dry at night. Nowadays, PJs should be able to constantly monitor the baby's vital signs and emotional state, and then relay that information wirelessly to the doting parent's iPad or smartphone.

When it comes to ICD-10 preparedness, payers are well ahead of providers in the quest to be ready for the new coding format by the Oct. 1, 2013 deadline. That news probably doesn’t come as a shock to anyone involved in the process, but it shows that the claim-filing infrastructure should be ready on the receiving end, coding experts say.

For the IT team at EKCITA HIE, it was an exhilarating end to an impromptu challenge – the challenge posed by the country’s top champion for interoperable healthcare, no less.

One of the most intriguing areas at HIMSS12 this past month was the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion. Presented in partnership with the RFID in Healthcare Consortium, HIMSS' walk-though mock-up offered an up-close look at the myriad ways radio-frequency identification (RFID), real-time location system (RTLS), sensor and wireless technologies – developed by companies such as AeroScout, AwarePoint, Intelligent InSites and RFID Global Solutions – can optimize inventory management, improve patient safety, streamline clinical workflow and more.