Health technology

1,606 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 65

Give meaningful use value for physicians

November 14, 2011Nov 14, 20113

Before I took over one of the classes that now teach at the medical school, I asked students why the value of that class was so low. One of the reasons they gave was that it was so hard to…

Before I took over one of the classes that now teach at the medical school, I asked students why the value of that class was so low. One of the reasons they gave was that it was so hard to do well in the class, and there were so many other things to study, students only put in enough effort to pass. In other words, incentives are only good if …

Why Steve Jobs was the ultimate physician

Jeff Tangney

November 11, 2011Nov 11, 20113

The release of Steve Jobs's biography launched a second round of well-considered articles about Jobs and his legacy. It has launched a rich, detailed, almost “too soon” debate about Jobs as a man and how we have come to define…

The release of Steve Jobs’s biography launched a second round of well-considered articles about Jobs and his legacy. It has launched a rich, detailed, almost “too soon” debate about Jobs as a man and how we have come to define genius in this day and age. Here at Doximity (an Apple fanboy shop if there ever were one), our head of design has already joked that after reading Isaacson’s biography, …

Tips for a seamless EHR transition

Rosemarie Nelson

November 4, 2011Nov 4, 2011

Technology adoption is iterative. Here are some suggestions that can help you adopt and morph EHR techniques and processes to fit into your own practice's workflow. When it comes right down to it, some are basic learning techniques that can…

Technology adoption is iterative. Here are some suggestions that can help you adopt and morph EHR techniques and processes to fit into your own practice’s workflow.

When it comes right down to it, some are basic learning techniques that can apply to any new situation in the office.

And remember, everyone has something to learn.

Don’t get stuck in your own routine, if a physician finds a work-around that improves a system function …

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Tips for a seamless EHR transition

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3 reasons why doctors will miss Steve Jobs

Iltifat Husain, MD

November 1, 2011Nov 1, 20113

Doctors love their Apple Products. Just walk into any hospital ward, and see the types of mobile devices we are using. At weekly Grand Rounds conferences, you see plenty of iPads in use. At physician meetings, the laptop of choice…

Doctors love their Apple Products – and Steve Jobs was obviously an extension of these …

How a medical student uses an iPad for patient care and education

Alex Chamessian

October 23, 2011Oct 23, 201128

iPads have been introduced into medical education mostly during the pre-clinical years. I'd like to share my experience using an iPad during my clinical year. I've found it to be exceedingly useful and versatile. I have an entire medical library…

iPads have been introduced into medical education mostly during the pre-clinical years. I’d like to share my experience using an iPad during my clinical year. I’ve found it to be exceedingly useful and versatile.

I have an entire medical library in my pocket. With the touch of a button I can pull up essential texts such as Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine or William’s Endocrinology. I get these books and …

How Steve Jobs mentored a physician and changed health care

Davis Liu, MD

October 6, 2011Oct 6, 201116

I've been reading A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring written by famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. Wooden spends half of his book thanking the people who had a powerful influence on his life, coaching, philosophy, and…

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I’ve been reading A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring written by famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. Wooden spends half of his book thanking the people who had a powerful influence on his life, coaching, philosophy, and outlook on life. Important people included his father, coaches, President Abraham Lincoln, and Mother Theresa.

Yes, President Abraham Lincoln and Mother Theresa.

Though …

Protecting health apps on the web from the evils of the Internet

John Halamka, MD

October 3, 2011Oct 3, 2011

The Internet can be a swamp of hackers, crackers, and hucksters attacking your systems for fun, profit and fraud. Defending your data and applications against this onslaught is a cold war, requiring constant escalation of new techniques against an ever…

Clinicians are mobile people. They work in ambulatory offices, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, on the road, and at home. They have desktops, laptops, tablets, iPhones and iPads. Ideally …

Few doctors will meet meaningful use in 2011, and that’s ok

Brian Klepper, PhD & David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA

September 26, 2011Sep 26, 20112

2011 will be a disappointing year for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator’s electronic health record incentive programs. We predict that few doctors and hospitals will meet the objectives set for the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technology. Meaningful use is, of course, the term that describes the objectives and measures providers and hospitals must meet in order to receive financial bonuses …

Mobile technology will be omnipresent in health care

Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

September 23, 2011Sep 23, 2011

A white paper from The Beryl Institute reveals a 10% increase in general patient satisfaction and over 40% improvement in satisfaction with educational materials at hospitals when interactive technology is provided. The publication examines six different hospital systems using the…

The publication examines six different hospital systems using the industry-standard Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey for evaluation. According to a press release on the study, the technology gave patients faster access to hospital staff and services by submitting …

Legal weaknesses of an electronic medical record

Mike Koriwchak, MD

September 23, 2011Sep 23, 20118

Over the past several months I have read several online discussions and comment threads on the medical-legal issues raised by EMR, including an HIMSS brochure on the subject. Most of these discussions miss what I consider to be the most important legal weaknesses of an electronic medical record. I finally came across an online discussion that comes closer to covering what I consider to be the most …

Social gaming to engage patients and improve wellness

Travis Good, MD, MBA

September 14, 2011Sep 14, 20114

Social connectivity to engage patients has real the potential to impact health through improvements in lifestyle, the main driver of wellness. This is in increasingly shorter supply as we collectively increase pounds, cholesterol, and blood pressure readings. Many have written…

Many have written compellingly on why social matters for health. The best I’ve seen are a post by Jay Parkinson (of Hello Health and Fast Company fame) that borrows from Atul …

My iPad and my hip fracture

Paul Hsieh, MD

September 12, 2011Sep 12, 20113

Dear Apple: I've been a happy iPad2 owner since March 2011, but I never fully appreciated its value until I recently broke my hip in a bad fall and required subsequent hospitalization. I am a physician, so I had already…

Dear Apple:

I’ve been a happy iPad2 owner since March 2011, but I never fully appreciated its value until I recently broke my hip in a bad fall and required subsequent hospitalization.

I am a physician, so I had already been using my iPad for my work, reading PDFs of medical articles, communicating with my colleagues via e-mail, etc. But when I broke my hip in an accident a few days ago, …

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My iPad and my hip fracture

How an EHR will impact physician productivity

Robert Rowley, MD

September 10, 2011Sep 10, 2011

One of the big concerns about implementing an electronic health record (EHR) into a medical practice is the fear that it will slow you down. In fact, after cost, usability (and its effect on productivity) is the second-biggest perceived barrier…

Numerous studies have shown that EHR implementation actually ends up saving cost in a group practice, mainly because of reducing or eliminating the need for paper-based medical …

The threat of technology to proper patient care

Josh Herigon, MPH

September 9, 2011Sep 9, 2011

Dr. Abraham Verghese wrote in the New York Times recently about the threat of technology to proper patient care. This is an excellent piece and although I do not disagree with the overall message, I think Dr. Verghese conflates different…

Dr. Abraham Verghese wrote in the New York Times recently about the threat of technology to proper patient care. This is an excellent piece and although I do not disagree with the overall message, I think Dr. Verghese conflates different issues currently plaguing our health care system.

Below, I provide some comments on a few of the major points Dr. Verghese writes about: “This computer record creates what I call an “iPatient” …

Telemedicine to augment the patient encounter

John Schumann, MD

September 8, 2011Sep 8, 201111

When I use the term "telemedicine," what does it mean to you? In current parlance, it usually refers to radiologists looking at digital images of x-rays and other scans from locations remote from the site of acquisition. Think "outsourcing" where…

When I use the term “telemedicine,” what does it mean to you?

In current parlance, it usually refers to radiologists looking at digital images of x-rays and other scans from locations remote from the site of acquisition. Think “outsourcing” where the radiologist could even be as far away as India.

But according to a recent conference I attended, telemedicine could mean so much more. It can range from synchronous video chat …

Tips for doctors looking for the right EHR

Margalit Gur-Arie

September 3, 2011Sep 3, 20112

Here we are going to talk about the second stage of shopping for an EHR. We are going to assume that you did your homework, defined your goals and constraints and prepared a comprehensive list of requirements for an EHR…

To continue our car shopping analogy, we are now ready to go kick some tires, and …

Natural language processing in electronic health records

Joe Petro

September 1, 2011Sep 1, 20113

80 percent of the clinical documentation that exists in healthcare today is unstructured. It is sometimes referred to as "the text blob" and is buried within electronic health records (EHRs). The inherent problem with "the text blob" is that locked…

80 percent of the clinical documentation that exists in healthcare today is unstructured. It is sometimes referred to as “the text blob” and is buried within electronic health records (EHRs). The inherent problem with “the text blob” is that locked within it lies an extraordinary amount of key clinical data – valuable information that can and should be leveraged to make more informed clinical decisions, to ultimately improve patient …

How government can improve EMR usability

Jonathan Baran

August 31, 2011Aug 31, 20113

Government involvement in usability has been the talk recently. In case your not aware, EMR usability is such as problem the government is exploring ways to get involved. As you might imagine the topic is a very sticky subject, especially EMR vendors, as the topic conjures images of committee-centered design and EMRs being worse of then they already are now.

However, when you think objectively about it, I believe the government …

Properly delete electronic medical records, or face fines

Pamela Wible, MD

August 30, 2011Aug 30, 201112

Could a complete stranger receive your echocardiogram results in the mail? Could a homeless guy in Boston end up with your labs in his shopping cart? Is it possible that your medical records were sold on eBay? Yes. Yes. And…

Could a complete stranger receive your echocardiogram results in the mail?

Could a homeless guy in Boston end up with your labs in his shopping cart?

Is it possible that your medical records were sold on eBay?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

On February 24, 2011, Massachusetts General Hospital was fined $1 million dollars by the federal government when an employee inadvertently left a stack of papers on the subway. These documents contained the …

Will patients trust sociable humanoid robots?

Kent Bottles, MD

August 25, 2011Aug 25, 20115

Within in five years primary care providers will begin being replaced by sociable humanoid robots, avatars, and computer programs. Within ten years you will no longer hear any complaints about medical students choosing specialty residencies over family practice because the role of the physician will be completely redefined to complement a rules based approach to the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. This transformation is inevitable because of demographics, economics, and …