Health technology

1,606 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 59

2 ways technology will improve patient care

January 20, 2013Jan 20, 2013

When I completed my internal medicine residency, my fellow trainees knew I was headed for a rural practice in Vermont. Much to my surprise, they gave me a traditional doctor’s black bag – a beautiful leather bag with pockets inside for instruments, tongue depressors, syringes, prescription pads, and all my tools. It was an extraordinarily meaningful gift that acknowledged a launch …

Patients who self track their data: Curb your enthusiasm

Keegan Duchicela, MD

January 17, 2013Jan 17, 20136

Happy New Year! It's 2013! Time for us to embark on ambitious health and fitness resolutions we have no intention of keeping past March! Here to assist us with our resolutions are a collection of fitness devices and apps that…

Happy New Year! It’s 2013! Time for us to embark on ambitious health and fitness resolutions we have no intention of keeping past March!

Here to assist us with our resolutions are a collection of fitness devices and apps that will help track our heart rate, sleep cycles, calories burned, steps walked, mood and much more. Data from these devices can …

How secure messaging and email benefit patients and improve outcomes

Dave Chase

January 15, 2013Jan 15, 20132

”Email is the killer app of patient portals.” I heard a variation of that quote when interviewing people for the patient-provider communication chapter of the book I’ve been co-editing and writing for HIMSS with Jan Oldenburg, Brad Tritle and Kate…

”Email is the killer app of patient portals.”

I heard a variation of that quote when interviewing people for the patient-provider communication chapter of the book I’ve been co-editing and writing for HIMSS with Jan Oldenburg, Brad Tritle and Kate Christensen. For the organizations who’ve pushed patient portals the furthest into their patient base, email is always the place where things started. In other words, email is the gateway drug for …

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Computers are meaningless in health care without computable data

Margalit Gur-Arie

January 12, 2013Jan 12, 20134

If this were a business concerned with bottom lines, cash flows and sustainability, this would be a good time to begin planning one of those posh executive retreats to evaluate current strategy. People would be feverishly working on pulling data for PowerPoint presentations, summarizing market research and deciding whether to select the vegetarian meal or not. If this were a better …

Unlike EMRs, paper charts never crash

Michael Kirsch, MD

January 11, 2013Jan 11, 201326

Which of the following events is most traumatic for a practicing physician? Your staff doesn’t show up because the roads are flooded, but the waiting room is full of patients. Medicare notifies you that coding discrepancies will result in an…

Which of the following events is most traumatic for a practicing physician?

Your staff doesn’t show up because the roads are flooded, but the waiting room is full of patients.
Medicare notifies you that coding discrepancies will result in an audit of 2 years of Medicare records.
You receive an offer of employment by a corporate medical institution who will bury your practice if

…

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Unlike EMRs, paper charts never crash

Health information exchange is the foundation of care coordination

Brian Klepper, PhD

January 9, 2013Jan 9, 20134

My wife Elaine was hospitalized for 6 days recently with an array of ailments related to her advancing cancer, so diagnosing and addressing her problems required a multidisciplinary approach. In addition to the nursing and support staffs, she was tended by an emergency physician, two hospitalists, three gastroenterologists, a pulmonologist, an infectious disease physician and an interventional radiologist. With the exception of one specialist who had performed a procedure on …

Protect yourself against fraudulent EHR documentation

Robert Hitchcock, MD

January 5, 2013Jan 5, 20139

As physicians, we know that no matter what care we provide, Medicare and private payers are going to do what they can to reduce payouts. For the health of the nation, healthcare spending simply cannot continue on its current trajectory. Reform measures such as accountable care organizations, bundled payments and penalties for potentially preventable complications and readmissions may help reduce expenditures, …

Will doctors recommend health apps to patients?

Jeff Livingston, MD

January 4, 2013Jan 4, 20139

There has been an explosion in health apps. Patients are using them for weight loss, calorie counting, exercise monitoring, ovulation calculation and for many other health needs. But to truly integrate the concept of health apps in the health care system healthcare providers will need to get involved. There is discussion in the health IT world lately regarding physician adoption of …

Information overload for doctors increases malpractice risk

Wes Fisher, MD

January 1, 2013Jan 1, 20133

I have used the electronic medical record (specifically EPIC) since 2004. I have grown accustomed to its nuances, benefits and quirks. There are parts about it I really like. There are parts of it I’d like to do without but accept that they are necessary evils in our current health care climate. I know that there will always be parts of any modified …

My smart phone helps me be a better doctor

Claire McCarthy, MD

December 28, 2012Dec 28, 20122

Your child has a rash and is acting a little sick. You reach for your phone--not to call the doctor, but to look up rashes on Google or your symptom checker app. This, according to the latest report from the…

Your child has a rash and is acting a little sick. You reach for your phone–not to call the doctor, but to look up rashes on Google or your symptom checker app.

This, according to the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, is the direction we are moving. As a doctor, I think it’s great.

In May of 2011, …

Explaining the epic failure of EMRs

Kiran Raj Pandey, MD

December 19, 2012Dec 19, 201216

It is no news a lot of doctors like to stick up a rather snotty nose to EMR. The defenders of the EMR tend to label such doctors as archetypal Luddites, sticking to their archaic ways and unbecoming of change and the new times. But as is usually the case with any two heated but opposite arguments, the truth likely lies …

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Explaining the epic failure of EMRs

Mobile health technology adoption depends on insurers

David Lee Scher, MD

December 14, 2012Dec 14, 2012

Insurers will also play a pivotal role in the development and adoption of patient-focused mobile health (mHealth) technology adoption for wellness as well as for the management of chronic diseases. 1. Payers hold the purse strings. Insurers will be the…

Insurers will also play a pivotal role in the development and adoption of patient-focused mobile health (mHealth) technology adoption for wellness as well as for the management of chronic diseases.

1. Payers hold the purse strings. Insurers will be the ones paying for the use of mHealth for chronic disease management for the vast majority of patients. They have a vested interest …

Why IT is the core of the healthcare renaissance

James C. Salwitz, MD

December 11, 2012Dec 11, 20128

Warning! I am a practicing doctor who sees real patients using an electronic medical record (EMR). My sole agenda is to provide the best patient care. I have no financial stake in information technology (IT). However, unlike the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Stephen Soumerai of Harvard or Mr. Ross Koppel of the University of Pennsylvania, I have actually …

Why the iPad Mini is the tablet physicians have been waiting for

Iltifat Husain, MD

December 6, 2012Dec 6, 20122

I was skeptical about the iPad Mini. I’ve used my Retina display iPad (3rd generation) for the past six months and been satisfied with the experience. I’ve used it in the hospital setting during rounds, and even while talking to…

I was skeptical about the iPad Mini. I’ve used my Retina display iPad (3rd generation) for the past six months and been satisfied with the experience.

I’ve used it in the hospital setting during rounds, and even while talking to patients in the ER. I’m able to easily pull up Epic’s EMR using the Citrix app, and I can easily store the iPad …

The EHR user interface and my personal moment of Zen

Margalit Gur-Arie

December 2, 2012Dec 2, 201240

Every time someone publishes an article or a paper or a blog post that has anything remotely to do with electronic health records (EHR), there is usually a flurry of reactions in the comments section, now available in most publications, and these always include at least half a dozen anonymous statements, usually from clinicians, decrying the current state of EHR software, best summed up by a commenter on THCB: “It …

Getting your orders online reduces risk in the practice

Rosemarie Nelson

December 2, 2012Dec 2, 2012

You're using an EHR. You're e-prescribing. You've eliminated pulling the old paper chart (most of the time!). That's good. But how about those orders? Are you still writing on the bottom of your fee slip or encounter ticket that you…

You’re using an EHR. You’re e-prescribing. You’ve eliminated pulling the old paper chart (most of the time!). That’s good.

But how about those orders?

Are you still writing on the bottom of your fee slip or encounter ticket that you want the patient to be scheduled for a test or with another physician? That’s not good.

Get the order in your EHR.

Instead of taking the time to write on paper, keep your hand …

Why the VCs aren’t the bad guys

Halle Tecco & Malay Gandhi

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 20128

Venture capitalists (VCs) ... are a combination of professional gamblers and loan sharks. The secret to success is pure luck and ruthlessness, and when the combination works and the ball lands on the exact number on the spinning roulette, venture…

Venture capitalists (VCs) … are a combination of professional gamblers and loan sharks. The secret to success is pure luck and ruthlessness, and when the combination works and the ball lands on the exact number on the spinning roulette, venture capitalists make lots of money.
-Margalit Gur-Arie, via KevinMD.com

The tone of this article, Why venture capitalists shouldn’t try to solve health care, exemplifies what is wrong with healthcare. In …

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Why the VCs aren’t the bad guys

We need a functional health information exchange

Allen L. Gee, MD, PhD

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 2012

Imagine this scenario: A CEO stands in front of the board at a crucial juncture in corporate history, and says: Members of the board, as you can see from the financial statements before you, we have had a reasonably good…

Imagine this scenario: A CEO stands in front of the board at a crucial juncture in corporate history, and says:

Members of the board, as you can see from the financial statements before you, we have had a reasonably good year. What!? You don’t have the financial statements in front of you? I have them here. I mean, I think I have them here. Where are they? Let me check with

…

Without patient participation, there is no patient engagement

Mack Baniameri

November 22, 2012Nov 22, 20125

Healthcare innovation companies are just beginning to understand technology challenges that come with engaging patients with chronic diseases in care management and care transition. Many of healthcare IT vendors assumed that a simple access to portals with half-baked information and…

For the past twenty years, the HIT industry has focused on developing software solutions exclusively for healthcare providers. These companies …

What are the biggest issues with EMR today?

Kevin R. Campbell, MD

November 19, 2012Nov 19, 201212

As medicine moves forward in its most technologically advanced era yet, we continue to struggle with basic concepts such as record keeping. The medical record is vital to the care of the patient. It tells the story of each patient’s journey through the medical system. The idea of centralizing all pertinent medical information is, in theory, a step in the right direction. In utopia, there would be one medical record …

Health technology

Articles, page 59

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