Molly Merrill
Yale School of Medicine is in the process of notifying approximately 1,000 individuals whose clinical health information was contained on a laptop computer that was recently stolen.
Preventing patient data breaches is cited as the number one priority for healthcare IT decision makers, but work remains for complying with security regulations, according to a national survey that examines IT trends in healthcare.
"Trends in technology are changing the employment landscape," said Terry Erdle, senior vice president, skills certification of CompTIA at Breakaway 2010, the premier event for IT companies in North America. That means IT workers will need to have different and more advanced skills.
Christiana Care Health System a private, not-for-profit tertiary-care hospital system with locations in Wilmington and Newark, Del., has announced two major initiatives that aim to drive healthcare IT adoption.
Information technology is an integral part of the agreement between Commonwealth Hematology-Oncology (CHO), the largest community-based private cancer practice in New England, and Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), which seeks to provide cancer patients with greater resources, closer to home.
Electronic health record systems could give rise to increased liability for healthcare providers, according to professors from Case Western Reserve University.
A small pilot study at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, found that sending text reminders to adolescent diabetes patients about their insulin treatments improved treatment adherence and blood glucose levels.
The increasing adoption of EHRs and other digital technologies by primary care physicians and specialists points to trends expected to help create "dramatic upswings in doctors' case loads," according to a new survey by research company Knowledge Networks.
Today some ambulances come equipped with telecommunciations technology that allows in-transport contact with physicians. But even the minutes between when a patient is loaded into the ambulance, or out and into a care setting, can leave room for miscommunications, according to one expert.
The electronic prescribing rate in upstate New York increased from 12 percent in 2009 to 17 percent in the first quarter of 2010, representing 3.6 million new and renewed prescriptions on an annual basis, according to a new report. The report suggests that this number will grow significantly as the result of the technology becoming more affordable, due in part to the government's incentives for health IT adoption.