Telemedicine in Pediatric ICU care

Mass General Hospital for Childern in partnership with Partner's Healthcare Center for Connected Health is using video conferencing technology in caring for pediatric ICU patients. Senior physicians are available to evaluate patients at the bedside remotely using video conferencing technology. The on site clinical team which includes nurses, resident physicians and interns, are all able to be join the senior physician in the bedside evaluation of the patient. They have plans to expand this model of care to the other wards and to use it for adult inpatient care as well. Read more...

EHR Market Share

Great article on market share in the EMR industry. EPIC is listed as having the largest market share, with eClinicalWorks and Allscripts as close seconds. I was surprised to see how much eClinicalWorks has grown in a short time. According to these numbers, it has pulled ahead of traditional EHR powerhouses such as GE Centricity and NextGen. Another surprise was seeing Practice fusion ranking 6th on the list. Impressive growth for this SaaS, Free EHR product. In a way, I see Practice fusion as the future for EHR technology and business model. EHR may move away from the classic client-server model to SaaS, and may in fact become more of a commodity service. A compelling case for achieving meaning full use with Practice Fusion's free EHR, is the fact that physicians will actually be ahead financially with receipt of the stimulus dollars for EHR adoption.

Benefits of Paperless Record Systems in Hospitals

This following guest article was written by Richard Hemby who regularly writes about online health care degrees and other college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college degree guide

The Benefits of Paperless Record Systems in Hospitals

Bulky charts full of hand-written scribbles, test results and medication history are becoming a thing of the past in hospitals across the nation. Medical charting is undergoing an exciting transformation to digital record keeping that will change patient care for good.

Until now, finding critical medical documents could take several minutes or more thumbing through pages and pages of records. During an emergency, those precious minutes could mean the difference between life and death. Thanks to electronic paperless record systems, a physician can pull up information about a patient in just seconds. The ability to do so can drastically improve the quality of patient care and save lives.

With traditional paper charting, it can take several days for physicians, laboratories and hospitals to transcribe and exchange exam notes and test results. This can cause a serious delay in proper medical care for patients. Paperless record systems allow all of the professionals treating a patient to quickly and efficiently exchange information.

Laptop and desktop computers hosting electronic record keeping software will soon replace overstuffed patient charts. Not only is this move fantastic for the future of healthcare, it makes great business sense for hospitals as well. Providing a higher level of patient care and faster service translates to happier patients and fewer medical errors and malpractice lawsuits. Having electronic medical records also frees up much needed space that has traditionally been devoted to storing an ever-growing library of paper charts.

President Barack Obama hopes to convert all paper charting to digital by the year 2014. In an effort to make this happen, the U.S. Government is offering $19 billion in stimulus money to help hospitals with the cost of transitioning to digital record systems. President Obama believes that the transition to paperless record systems will make the U.S. health care system safer, more efficient and will reduce overall health care costs.

While the initial cost of implementing a paperless system can be very steep, electronic record keeping is more cost effective than paper records in the long run. When all new records are written electronically and all old records have been scanned into the system, the cost of storing paper records and paying workers to organize, file and maintain them will be eliminated. This equals huge long-term savings for hospitals. Electronic record keeping can be intimidating at first, but the benefits that paperless record systems offer greatly outweigh the upfront cost.

The Benefits of Paperless Record Systems in Hospitals

This following guest article was written by Richard Hemby who regularly writes about online health care degrees and other college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college degree guide

Bulky charts full of hand-written scribbles, test results and medication history are becoming a thing of the past in hospitals across the nation. Medical charting is undergoing an exciting transformation to digital record keeping that will change patient care for good.

Until now, finding critical medical documents could take several minutes or more thumbing through pages and pages of records. During an emergency, those precious minutes could mean the difference between life and death. Thanks to electronic paperless record systems, a physician can pull up information about a patient in just seconds. The ability to do so can drastically improve the quality of patient care and save lives.

With traditional paper charting, it can take several days for physicians, laboratories and hospitals to transcribe and exchange exam notes and test results. This can cause a serious delay in proper medical care for patients. Paperless record systems allow all of the professionals treating a patient to quickly and efficiently exchange information.

Laptop and desktop computers hosting electronic record keeping software will soon replace overstuffed patient charts. Not only is this move fantastic for the future of healthcare, it makes great business sense for hospitals as well. Providing a higher level of patient care and faster service translates to happier patients and fewer medical errors and malpractice lawsuits. Having electronic medical records also frees up much needed space that has traditionally been devoted to storing an ever-growing library of paper charts.

President Barack Obama hopes to convert all paper charting to digital by the year 2014. In an effort to make this happen, the U.S. Government is offering $19 billion in stimulus money to help hospitals with the cost of transitioning to digital record systems. President Obama believes that the transition to paperless record systems will make the U.S. health care system safer, more efficient and will reduce overall health care costs.

While the initial cost of implementing a paperless system can be very steep, electronic record keeping is more cost effective than paper records in the long run. When all new records are written electronically and all old records have been scanned into the system, the cost of storing paper records and paying workers to organize, file and maintain them will be eliminated. This equals huge long-term savings for hospitals. Electronic record keeping can be intimidating at first, but the benefits that paperless record systems offer greatly outweigh the upfront cost.

Video conferencing for Mental Health

Here's Video conferencing being used for Mental Health. As many of us know, obtaining mental health services can be a challenge, especially for people in remote areas. There is a tremendous need for mental health services among the veteran population, especially those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans sometime forgo mental health services due to lack of availability of these services. Telemedicine has made it possible for these veterans to obtain this crucial services in a convenient manner. As a result, veterans who did not seek help earlier, are now getting care.

Facebook's Data Model

I find data models and scalability design for popular applications, such as facebook and Linkedin to be quite fascinating.
Here is the data model of facebook, which has been reverse engineered.

Here is the Data API documentation.

Some thoughts on the data model, and the power using associations.

Telemedicine in the Pediatric ICU

Video conferencing is being used in treating Pediatric patient at the Mass General Pediatric ICU:

"The attending physician can then see the patient, talk with clinicians on-site, personally evaluate the child's condition and make treatment decisions."

"The attending physician can then see the patient, talk with clinicians on-site, personally evaluate the child's condition and make treatment decisions. Special cameras and scopes can also be attached to the hospital-based unit to allow for closer evaluation of the patient."

"Because the attending physician can remotely examine the patient and communicate with the on-site staff directly, decision making can be enhanced and the quality of care improved."

Partners Connected Health is using Video conferencing telemedicine technology to deliver physician resources example how this technology can used to improve access to high value services. Nursing homes are another health care setting that can benefit from delivering remotely located physician resources on as demand basis. Nursing homes typically struggle to have adequate physician coverage on site and can certainly benefit fromthis technology

Top 50 Healthcare IT blogs

Health Sensei has released its list of the 50 Healthcare IT blogs. I'm honored to be included in this list among some highly distinguished blogs.

Telemedicine for Diabetic Teaching

This study demonstrated that diabetic teaching using via video conferencing based telemedicine was as effective as in-person teaching in improving control and patient satisfaction.

The advantage that diabetic teaching via telemedicine offers over the traditional face to face encounter, is the ability to deploy essential diabetic teaching across a wider region, thus solving the problem of access that many patients face.

Ideally, I envision that a patient should be able to visit their physician , and then from the same office visit, access the diabetic trainer via the video conferencing. Toward the end of the session, the patient and the remotely located diabetic educator would do a recap with the physician in order to insure the everyone is on the same page. This would be a way to decrease the level of fragmentation that can exist in diabetic care when multiple providers are involved.

The results of the study are listed below:

RESULTS—Patient satisfaction was high in the telemedicine group. Problem Areas in Diabetes scale scores improved significantly with diabetes education (adjusted P <>_1c improved from 8.6 ± 1.8% at baseline to 7.8 ± 1.5% immediately after education and 7.8 ± 1.8% 3 months after the third educational visit (unadjusted P <>P = 0.089 adjusted for BMI and age), with similar changes observed in the telemedicine and in-person groups.

Telemedicine results in few tests and greater patient satisfaction

http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Telemedicine-could-offer-fewer-follow-up-tests-and-greater-satisfaction-for-patients-7867-1/

How to Achieve Meaningful Use

See this easy to understand article summarizing meaningful use.