Telehealth awareness reaches ‘tipping point,’ adoption rate not far behind
Telehealth may have reached the “tipping point” in terms of awareness by patients and providers, but it could be years down the road before the market will reach that point in adoption of the technology, according to London-headquartered business analyst Datamonitor. The entry of high-profile companies such as Intel and IBM into the marketplace may soon make “telehealth” as common a household term as “EHR (electronic health record),” Datamonitor notes. Up to this point, “the general public and most medical practitioners have never heard of telehealth,” the company said. “Even among providers that are familiar with EHRs, telehealth is a foreign concept that, once explained, makes perfect sense to healthcare stakeholders, particularly patients.” Meanwhile, the adoption of telehealth will grow, but will not become widespread for a few more years, according to Datamonitor. Barriers to adoption – reimbursement matters, implementation expense and lack of technical standards in some parts of the country – are slowly coming down, the company adds.   http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=97804711

National Health IT office set to release e-health data sharing recommendations
After three years of working to resolve policy differences among states regarding the sharing of electronic health information, the recommendations of the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) agency will be made public by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) next month. The findings, in which teams from 42 states have reconciled differences and come to a compromise on the handling of health information, could help state officials lay the groundwork for interstate health data sharing and speed up the use of health information technology funds from the economic stimulus package, according to Dr. Art Davidson, director of public health informatics at the Denver Public Health Department. ONC plans to release the tools and recommendations of seven workgroups that have focused on information sharing hurdles related to patient consent, privacy, provider education, security standards and other issues. http://govhealthit.com/articles/...

Computer chips lend new traction to remote patient monitoring
Computer chips are increasingly becoming a key tool in the way doctors can monitor their patients’ health, allowing them to track vital signs without requiring an office visit, according to researchers at facilities such as JohnsHopkinsUniversity, the University of California at Los Angeles, and Kaiser Permanente. Such chips can be found in common medical items like defibrillators, scales, blood pressure cuffs and insulin pumps. “Technology tends to bubble along for quite a while, and then all of a sudden, forces come together, and it starts gaining traction,” said Greg de Lissovoy, health economist at Johns Hopkins. “That’s where we are right now in this technology.” The devices provide a much fuller picture of a patient’s health, according to Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist at UCLA. “[In real life], we see a patient, we get a snapshot in time, we get some data,” Saxon said. “But we really don’t get a sense of how that patient is doing in their daily life.” http://marketplace.publicradio.org/...

European Commission calls for doubling of health IT funding by 2013
In an attempt to “make Europe the world leader in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT),” the European Commission has proposed doubling funding for ICT research over the next four years, from $1.43 billion [USD] in 2010 to almost $3 billion [USD] by 2013. The EC’s proposal calls for it to contribute an additional $0.8 billion from 2010 budget levels, and for member states to match that amount, according to Viviane Reding, European Union Commissioner for Information Society and Media. “Europe represents the largest share of the world’s ICT market,” Reding said. “Our task is to make sure that Europe is well-equipped to harness the potential of technologies like the Internet or mobile phones.”Europe should also “be the home for world-class poles of excellence in ICT,” Reding said, which means making research careers more attractive to potential job candidates and help bridge the current skills gap. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction....

Stimulus package requirements should not be a problem for CCHIT, HITSP
The new economic stimulus package should mean business as usual for two existing governmental certification and standards boards, according to the heads of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP). According to CCHIT Chairperson Mike Leavitt, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will use CCHIT as the certification body outlined in the new stimulus law, primarily because there is not enough time to create a new one. Providers with IT systems need to be certified by 2010 to qualify for stimulus bonuses. The exact health IT certification to be used by HHS remains up in the air at this point, Leavitt notes. Meanwhile, HITSP should end up as the standards group used by the stimulus law by virtue of its already-developed, substantial body of work, HITSP Chairperson John Halamka said. “I still believe there is useful work to be done by HITSP,” he said. http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/...

Financial, technological issues make Obama’s EHR push not so easy to execute
President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package may help tackle one of the two biggest barriers to health information technology adoption – financial penalties – but whether it can solve various technology issues that hinder large-scale deployment remains to be seen, according to the associate medical director at Kaiser Permanente Northwest. Homer Chin, KPN’s associate medical director for clinical information systems, notes that doctors stand to get the least benefits from electronic health record (EHR) programs due to their high cost of implementation. Physicians, Chin said, are unwilling to spend $20,000 to $50,000 on an EHR system where the benefits go to someone else. This problem is addressed by incentives for doctors who implement EHRs, who will receive roughly $17 billion of the $19 billion the plan allocates for IT matters, according to Chin. The remaining $2 billion is for IT research in how to address technological issues, an amount that is far from enough and “does not really address the Rube Goldberg task of making all the IT infrastructure work together,” Chin said.   http://www.infoworld.com/archives/...

Britain to reorganize National Health Service’s IT division to speed up service
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) Connecting for Health (CfH) program is undergoing reorganization, as the government tries to improve the way NHS Information Technology is delivered nationally. Most of CfH’s leadership roles will be transferred to the Department of Health, including that of chief technology officer, director of policy and planning, and clinical director of informatics, according to CfH officials. The changes come into effect April 6. CfH will lose power under the changes, but could actually benefit from the reorganization, according to Tola Sergeant, an analyst with London-based telecom consulting firm Ovum. “Having some NHS CfH people in senior roles within the DoH will put IT experts in a stronger position to influence policy that affects the program,” she said. http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news/2238260/nhs-reorganised

Delay in creation of national telehealth system has New England physicians restless
Healthcare advocates in New England are still waiting for a government-promised plan to improve communication between doctors and other providers in rural areas. In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission said it would spend $417 million to create a national communications system that would use videoconferencing and telemedicine technology to link healthcare providers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The New England Telehealth Consortium (NETC) was formed in 2008 to build the network of at least 500 healthcare providers, according to NETC Executive Director Brian Thibeau. Now, Northern New England isn’t likely to get a program until at least 2010, “if things go well,” Thibeau said. “The bureaucracy of the process has proven to be quite daunting.” The problem goes beyond New England: none of the 69 groups that have applied has an operating system, and only two, Wisconsin and Montana, have been guaranteed money. FCC spokesperson Robert Kenny said the commission is “looking at those issues really closely.” http://www.nhpr.org/node/24015

Baton Rouge launches ambulance-based telemedicine service
Baton Rouge, LA has become the second city in the nation to implement a telemedicine program that allows doctors to treat patients en route to the emergency room, city-parish officials announced. The city’s specially equipped ambulance will initially communicate only with Our Lady of the LakeRegionalMedicalCenter, but plans call for the program to be expanded to all seven of the area’s major hospitals, according to Chad Guillot, Our Lady’s assistant director of Emergency Medical Services. The ambulance uses the same wireless network that area police are using for high-tech surveillance. The only other American city with a similar program is Tucson, AZ, although the program is also used overseas in countries with limited numbers of physicians and hospitals, Guillot said. http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/41190372.html

Health department test-runs 12 telehealth innovation projects throughout England
The United Kingdom has simultaneously begun 12 projects that test a range of telehealth and telecare innovations, according to a report by the King’s Fund, a nonprofit health system analysis group based in London. The projects being carried out by the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) Action Network, an online resource on telecare, telehealth and the management of long-term conditions run by the King’s Fund and funded by England’s Department of Health, are runner-up items in the health department’s 2008 bid for assistive technologies. They range from the use of telehealth on patients with chronic pulmonary disease, to a telephone support service for patients with long-term conditions. Data and discoveries from each of the projects will be reported to the health department’s WSD program evaluation team for future consideration, the health agency notes.  http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/...

Complete archives of Telemedicine and e-Health Journal now available online
Issues of Telemedicine and e-Health are now available online back to volume 1 of the publication, publisher Mary Ann Liebert Inc. announced. The company recently completed adding volumes 1-4 of the journal, dating back to 1995, to its electronic archives at www.liebertpub.com/tmj . Subscribers, including members of the American Telemedicine Association, now have full access to any article published in the journal during its 15-year history. http://www.liebertpub.com/tmj

Envoii Healthcare changes name to Secure eHealth
Envoii Healthcare LLC, a healthcare communications provider based in Lexington, KY, has changed its name to Secure eHealth LLC, effective immediately, parent firm VirtualHealth Technologies Inc. announced. VirtualHealth President Jim Renfro said the new name better reflects the subsidiary’s focus on e-health security products. “This name change is an important part of our continuing effort to demonstrate our company’s commitment on growing our opportunities in this evolving climate of healthcare reform,” Renfro said. “It has been abundantly clear that as systems integration becomes the focal point in building the connectivity required to enable change, everyone involved still needs to address the ongoing concerns regarding securing the data and maintaining the patient’s privacy.” http://www.secure-ehealth.com/images/...