Electronic Health Record (EHR)

See the following -

Top Rated Electronic Health Record Software Is Free

Dan Munro | Forbes.com | July 27, 2014

Earlier this month, Medscape published the results of their recent survey (here) which asked 18,575 physicians across 25 specialties to rate their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. For overall satisfaction, the #1 ranked EHR solution was the VA’s Computerized Patient Record System ‒ also known as VistA. It was built using open‒source software and is therefore license free.

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Transforming Health Care Through A 360-Degree View Of Data

How medical care can be substantially improved through a full spectrum view of all factors that affect health was the topic of Payam Etminani's presentation at the 2019 IDGA Veterans Benefits Conference in Washington D.C. Etminani, the CEO of Bitscopic, argued that the ability to view all health data including social, environmental and genomic information in addition to the traditional clinical measures (vital signs, blood work, history of illness etc), would lead to significant improvement in care. Etminani described how recent advances in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) make combining and using these large and widely varied sets of information possible. Read More »

Trusting Government: A Tale of Two Federal Advisory Groups

David Kibbe and Brian Klepper | Health Affairs Blog | February 2, 2012

By contrast, and despite its immense influence over Medicare and commercial health expenditures, the RUC proceedings are opaque. Its meetings are closed to the public – participation requires an invitation from the Chair – and transcripts are not publicly available. Members vote secretly by electronic ballot, and the AMA discards records of the votes. Still, CMS has accepted more than 90 percent of the RUC’s 7,000 recommendations since 1991, often without further due diligence. The RUC is also rife with conflict.

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Two Government Organizations, One Health Information System

Rita Boland | SIGNAL Online | February 1, 2012

The U.S. Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs have launched an effort to combine their two electronic health record systems into one. This integrated Electronic Health Record will track medical care from the day military members join the service through the rest of their lives. The project will not be a simple joining of two legacy systems; rather, it will upgrade current tools, with personnel continually integrating new technology, capability and processes to improve functionality of the combined offering.

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Two Things Hospitals Can't Afford To Ignore

Kathleen Goepferd | Government Health IT | June 11, 2014

The next time someone asks your patient how they’re doing, they might stop to check their data before answering...Consider: An activity and sleep-monitoring device from Fitbit was Amazon.com’s top-selling health and personal care item this past holiday shopping season...

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U.S. Peace Corps Adopts OpenEMR for use in 77 Countries World-wide

The U.S. Peace Corps recently awarded a five-year contract to EnSoftek to implement OpenEMR in its field offices around the world. OpenEMR is one of the most widely implemented electronic medical record (EMR) systems in the world with more than 15,000 installs around the globe and translations into 19 languages. The total solution will also includes Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, BizTalk, SQL Server, and other software applications and will be known collectively as PCMEDICS. Read More »

UC Davis Conducting Research Survey on What Motivates Open Health Developers

Mona Alsaffar, a health informatics graduate student at University of California-Davis is conducting a study about developers involved in healthcare open source projects. She contacted Open Health News for help in informing the open health community about the project.

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UK's Blackpool Teaching Hospitals selects open source electronic patient records

Press Release | Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, openMAXIMS CIC, IMS MAXIMS | January 7, 2016

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has selected an open source electronic patient record (EPR) called openMAXIMS from healthcare software provider IMS MAXIMS, to improve the recording and sharing of patient data across its hospital and community sites. The open source approach is expected to save the trust several million pounds in licence fees and future development costs, while also providing more control on how the software is developed in line with the hospital’s needs. Implementation started in December 2015 and once rolled out, Blackpool will become the third NHS trust to deploy the IMS MAXIMS open source EPR.

UK's Leeds City Council and Ripple Award Part of Open Source Health IT Project to Lockheed Martin

Press Release | Leeds City Council, Ripple | June 13, 2016

Leeds City Council and Ripple have chosen Lockheed Martin to help deliver aspects of the open source IT development to build an integrated digital care record platform. Ripple has a vision to create an open source health and care platform that allows frontline staff access to the most up to date and joined up care information about an individual – driving better and safer care.

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United Kingdom Eyes VA’s Electronic Health Record

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | March 25, 2013

The Veterans Affairs Department and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service have teamed up to share ideas, strategies and leadership for development of health information technology, opening the possibility that the NHS could use VA’s electronic health record system. Peter Levin, the former VA Chief Technology Officer who retired this month, told Nextgov the Pentagon also should adopt VA electronic health record. Read More »

University of Utah Health and Intermountain Healthcare Receive $3.8 Million to Develop Advanced Open Source Cancer Screening Tool

Press Release | Intermountain Healthcare, University of Utah Health | August 30, 2017

Researchers from the University of Utah Health, Intermountain Healthcare, and Huntsman Cancer Institute received a grant for $3.8 Million from the National Cancer Institute to develop an advanced cancer screening tool. The new tool will couple electronic health record technologies with advanced clinical decision support (CDS) tools to screen for several types of cancer and identify and manage high risk patients within primary care settings and the broader care delivery system.

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US Hospitals Facing Financial Squeeze-Mass Closures

In the last year, the profitability of U.S. hospitals eroded for the first time since the Great Recession, pushing some closer to and others over the solvency precipice. Revenues are down and costs are up.  And these issues appear systemic and entrenched, giving rise to a series of important and relevant questions: How can hospitals adapt?  If they do, will they still survive? And, do we as a nation think it’s important to make hospitals accessible, even if they lose money? Read More »

US Senate Releases Draft Future Pandemic Preparedness Plan - Asks for Feedback

On June 10, 2020 the US Senate released a white paper titled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic" under the signature of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. The white paper has five recommendations to address future pandemics based on lessons learned from COVID-19 and the past 20 years of pandemic planning. "The five recommendations...along with a series of questions at the end of this white paper, are intended to elicit recommendations that Congress can consider and act on this year," Senator Alexander said in a statement, adding that "I am inviting comments, responses, and any additional recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to consider. This feedback will be shared with my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican." This feedback from the public will be accepted until June 26, 2020... Read More »

Using Open Technology To Build a Biodefense Against the Coronavirus

As the number of US cases of the coronavirus rises, how will healthcare professionals be able to tell the difference between which panicked patients with similar symptoms has what? Even if the patient hasn't traveled to Wuhan or China recently, what if they sat at a Starbucks with someone who did? With the incubation time-lag before symptoms appear, who would even know? The challenge of monitoring 330 million people for infectious disease outbreaks is daunting. Take the flu as an example. During the last flu season which, as already discussed, was not as complex as this year's season, approximately 35.5 million Americans had flu symptoms, 16.5 million received medical care, 490,600 were hospitalized and 34,200 died.

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VA Abruptly Cancels Key Software Contract for Joint Health Record

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | February 29, 2012

Yesterday, the Veterans Affairs Department abruptly terminated a $102.6 million contract awarded to ASM Research in January to develop software vital to an integrated electronic health record system that will serve both VA and the Defense Department. Read More »