quality
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Technology Is Keeping Track Of More Than Just Scores At The London 2012 Olympic Games
Today, technology is tracking more than just scores, stats, and outcomes of competitions at the London 2012 Olympics. For the first time in history, our Olympic athletes, their doctors, and trainers will use electronic health records to track, treat, and transform the health of Team USA. Read More »
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The EHR Has No Clothes
Medical students returning from rotations at Veterans’ Administration Hospitals often rave about how good VistA is – something I have never heard with any other EHR. While I have not used it in clinical care, I have examined the demonstration client available on the web and been impressed by the simple, clean interface – quite unlike most other EHRs I have used or seen. Read More »
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The Golden Age Of Health Informatics?
So much attention is paid to the problems in the trenches that it is easy to forget just how far we've come in the past few years. It was only 2008 when the oft-cited DesRoches NEJM survey showed that 4 percent of physicians had a clinically active electronic medical records system (my term for what they called fully functional EMRs). [...] Read More »
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The High Cost Of Poor Software Quality
We recently highlighted how a bug in the Stockholm Stock Exchange caused an errant trade of more than 4.2 billion index futures contracts (a value equal to 131 times Sweden’s GDP) to send the trading network into a tailspin and forced trading to a halt. A spokesperson for the exchange blamed the mistake on a parsing error... Read More »
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The Human Side of Developing Integrated Electronic Health Records
As the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments work to develop an integrated electronichealth record the concept is simple—streamline the military health care system for active-duty service members, veterans and retirees—but getting there is not. Read More »
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The Quality of Open Source Code Increases Adoption
Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) attendees are not only learning about new trends in open source, but also hearing the results of the Future of Open Source Software Survey. The survey results were announced during a panel discussion of experts led by Michael Skok, General Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners. Read More »
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The Unhealthy Side Effects of Meaningful Use
There are also no established EMR implementation strategies for medical practices. Implementing a complex EMR system into a busy medical practice is like replacing an aircraft’s engines while it is still flying. During implementation there can be no reduction in patient volume and no errors in patient care. Information technology is the only medical technology that has been given a “free pass,” with apparently no need to prove itself the way we prove the worthiness of new drugs, medical devices and surgical procedures.
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Three Words That Health Care Should Stop Using: Insurance, Market, and Quality (Part 2 of 2)
Andy Oram
Endless organizations such as the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collect quality measures, and CMS has tried strenuously to include quality measures in Meaningful Use and the new MACRA program. We actually have not a dearth of quality measures, but a surfeit. Doctors feel overwhelmed with these measures. They are difficult to collect, and we don’t know how to combine them to create easy reports that patients can act on. There is a difference between completing a successful surgery, caring for things such as pain and infection prevention after surgery, and creating a follow-up plan that minimizes the chance of readmission. All those things (and many more) are elements of quality.
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To Ted Or Not To Ted?
While science bloggers are filling in for the rapidly disappearing species known as the “science journalist”, new outlets for communicating science to the public have arisen as well. Perhaps the best known and most viewed of these outlets is TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), whose 18 minute TED Talks present entertaining and inspiring messages, often revolving around new scientific breakthroughs. While the production values of TED Talks are always top-notch, questions are arising about the quality and veracity of the content...
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tranSMART Foundation Releases Version 16.1 of Its Open-Source, Open-Data Translational Medicine Platform
The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization providing a global, open-source, open-data knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, today announced the release of tranSMART version 16.1. This version brings key enhancements to the quality and stability of the platform, a significantly improved scripted installation process and a library of more than 100 tranSMART-ready™ public datasets that can be loaded into the platform using simple included scripts...
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Trying To Lower Readmissions? Give Your Patients A Health App
On October 1 2012, the CMS Readmission Reduction Program kicked in - much to the consternation of 2,217 hospitals that will be penalized. This followed 18 months of hand wringing that began when the program was introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Read More »
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Twitter And Linux: The Open Source Marriage Made In Heaven
Twitter has transformed how people around the world communicate, from the mass political uprisings of 2011’s Arab Spring to how we anoint celebrities and cultural decision makers. It does this partly because it is ubiquitous and fast. But how does it manage to send out over 400 million tweets a day? Not surprisingly, the service is powered [by] ... Linux. Read More »
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U.S. Department Of Veteran Affairs Awards $28.8 Million TeleHealth Contract To AMC Health
AMC Health, a leading provider of telehealth solutions, announced today that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has awarded the company a five-year contract worth up to $28.8 million to provide telehealth solutions and services... Read More »
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Usability Of EHRs Remains A Priority For ONC
The New Year is a time of reflection and anticipation. We reflect on what went well in the past (and perhaps what didn’t go so well); we anticipate future challenges and accomplishments. Read More »
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USAID Uses Data.gov for Crowdsourcing
The U.S. Agency for International Development turned to crowdsourcing to fill missing data gaps it uncovered while trying to map where its development credit authority loans were being issued. After considering several platforms, the agency found a surprising crowdsourcing solution in data.gov, said Stephanie Grosser, presidential management fellow at USAID, during a June 28 event, hosted by the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Read More »
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