Telehealth
Once upon a time, the tools of medicine were pretty simple: tongue depressor, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope. Nowadays? Try exergames and first-person simulators, "wiihabilitation" and multiplayer mHealth apps.
As doctors increasingly adopt mobile devices, this much seems clear: At least for now, Apple is king.
Founder of KevinMD.com board certified in internal medicine and practices primary care in Nashua, N.H. His blog has more than 47,000 RSS subscribers and 40,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter, making him social media's leading physician voice.
Physicians started to cautiously enter the social media space beginning around 2005 – most blogging anonymously – but today doctors are beginning to embrace the technology as a way to make a difference in patient education.
When it comes to using social media, fear of violating HIPAA rules is top of mind for physicians, but experts say if they can adhere to privacy regulations, the technology’s benefits are far reaching.
The "HOPEmobile" is a 64-foot trailer outfitted with sophisticated telemedicine equipment that travels to underserved and remote areas of New Mexico, providing free, comprehensive health screenings for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, pre-diabetes and other chronic conditions.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) approved in June the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the ONC-approved accreditor (ONC-AA) for the permanent certification program for health information technology.
The hours-long wait in the emergency department is the standard of almost any hospital horror story – for the hospital as well as the patient. It’s frustrating for the patient who wants to be treated, and for the hospital administrator who wants to provide quality care and ensure a good rapport with the community.
– During the Premier Breakthroughs conference on June 15, representatives from Providence Health & Services detailed the benefits of installing a collaborative perinatal wide area network (WAN) to connect the system’s five hospitals in southern California.
Regional Health in South Dakota advocates standardized electronic charting system as a means to improve care coordination while reducing legal risks.