Retail health clinic sector’s new resource: a ‘mobile clinic on wheels’
Mobile medicine is entering the retail health clinic sector. Evansville, IN-based telemedicine systems provider ICUcare LLC has released a combined telemedicine and electronic health record (EHR) system tailored to the fast-growing medical market covered by retail giants such as CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. According to ICUcare President Robert Higgs, the company’s eDoc Telemedicine/EHR System acts as a “mobile clinic on wheels,” capable of integrating with existing EHR networks for patient record transfer, and can also help physicians provide services such as general health exams, ECGs, ultrasounds, and teleconferenced sessions. Retail health clinics – themselves a fairly new resource – are very limited in their offerings, Higgs notes. The system can also bring the quality of urban healthcare to rural areas – a luxury patients in major metropolitan areas often take for granted, he said.  Full Story

Obama to name IHI’s Berwick as new CMS administrator
Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, MA, is about to become the first permanent administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) since 2006, according to federal officials. Senate Finance Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said President Obama plans to nominate Berwick to fill the slot last held by Mark McClellan until he stepped down four years ago. Berwick, as CMS administrator, would oversee the allocation of an estimated $25 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to healthcare providers that demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records. A pediatrician, Berwick has repeatedly challenged doctors and hospitals to provide better care at a lower cost. Berwick’s nomination would be subject to Senate confirmation, Grassley said. If confirmed, he would replace Charlene Frizzera, who has served as CMS acting administrator and chief operations officer since 2009. Frizzera would continue as COO. Full Story

Cerner chosen to introduce health IT systems to Alaska
The Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC) has chosen Cerner Corporation as provider of healthcare information technology services for 55,000 Anchorage, AK-area residents. According to ANMC Administrator Dan Neumeister, Kansas City, MO-based Cerner’s various health IT solutions, including patient records-linking CareAware, will allow ANMC to easily automate its registration, scheduling and computerized physician order entry (CPOE). Patients will also be able to securely and electronically communicate with their provider, while providers manage the electronic health records (EHR) of patients located outside the community, Cerner Chief Operating Officer Mike Valentine said. The technology is expected to be in place by October 2011. Full Story

ExpressMD, DeVilbiss develop sleep apnea patient monitoring technology
Hoping to help patients deal with sleep apnea, ExpressMD Solutions, a provider of remote patient monitoring systems and services for patients with chronic illnesses, has developed an interface between its Electronic House Call (EHC) in-home remote patient monitoring solution and DeVilbiss Healthcare’s IntelliPAP AutoAdjust CPAP device. According to Joe Howard, vice president of marketing at DeVilbiss Healthcare in Somerset, PA, the interface allows EHC to be used in the monitoring, management, and optimization of a patient’s adherence to their sleep therapy program. EHC also enables healthcare providers to manage more patients without increasing staff overhead costs, and to improve personalized care plans and vital statistics monitoring, while reducing the requirement for home and office patient visits, Howard said. Full Story

Federal government’s next HIE solutions to support cloud services
The Federal Health Architecture office’s Connect software gateway – which helps agencies and other organizations share health-related information – will begin supporting cloud computing-based health information services with its next two software releases, the agency reports. Cloud computing uses raw computing power and computer storage capacity to supply business services to organizations on an as-needed basis, resulting in a less-expensive product for the user, according to FHA program manager Vish Sankaran. The new releases, scheduled for July and September, allow healthcare providers, agencies and health information exchanges (HIE) access to features such as messaging, patient discovery, and records look-up. The system should also provide a major benefit to agencies which manage multiple programs with overlapping HIE requirements, such as state departments of health, Medicaid offices, or food assistance and mental health programs, Sankaran said. Full Story

Twitter could turn into major source of medical misinformation
Popular social media tool Twitter could be a major thorn in physicians’ sides, due to its potential to spread misinformation about health and medicine, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University and New York City-based blogging site MixedInk. A study of more than 52,000 Twitter status updates on antibiotics posted from March to July 2009 revealed only 700 involving misunderstandings or misuse of medications. But, that figure could swell dramatically as misinformation spreads to a larger audience because of how information flows through the Twitter network, the study notes. The report authors stress that because health information is shared extensively on such networks, healthcare professionals must have a basic familiarity with social networking media services. They add that such services can potentially be used to gather important real-time health data and may provide a venue to identify potential misuse or misunderstanding of antibiotics, promote positive behavior change, and disseminate valid information.   Full Story

Doctors face ethical dilemma with freely available patient data on Web
Therapists are increasingly facing a moral dilemma when it comes to the Internet and their patients’ health: those patients often won’t talk to their doctors about emotional problems, but they have no issue with posting their feelings on social media sites like Facebook and personal Web sites. Those feelings – perhaps crucial to saving the patient’s life – are easily tracked down via a click of a search engine, therapists note. But should they do so? According to Stephen Behnke, ethics director for the American Psychological Association (APA), there’s no clear answer – yet. Behnke said APA members are split as to how to use the Internet in terms of their patients, and whether this is a necessary means of medical treatment or violation of privacy. There’s also debate as to how much information the therapists themselves should post online, as well as what social media groups, if any, they should participate in. It’s a balancing act, according to Behnke, between creating rules that allow the field to grow, but also prevent patient harm. Full Story

NSF awards $600,000 grant to UC Davis Health System
The University of California Davis Health System has received a two-year, $600,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnerships for Innovation grant to develop a Medical Technology Commercialization Clinic. According to Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for human health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine at UC Davis, the clinic will “train students to translate innovative technologies developed in university laboratories into useful, marketable products to advance patients’ health.” The training will include use of live and virtual forums to give graduate and postdoctoral students in biomedical sciences, engineering and business hands-on training to convert high-impact research into new treatments and products, Pomeroy said. Full Story

Telemedical aid continues for Haitian quake victims
Telemedicine technology continues to aid persons impacted by last January’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Long Island, NY teleradiologist Allen Rothpearl was horrified by early images of damage and injured victims following the Jan. 12 quake, but was unable to leave his New York practice to go to Haiti to lend aid. But when Rothpearl discovered that the x-ray suite at St. Damien’s pediatric hospital in Port-au-Prince had suffered no damage during the quake due to its heavier construction, Rothpearl set up a program in which a team of physicians sitting in New York, California and Texas now read 20 to 40 digital x-rays a day for the hospital at no charge. Every digital x-ray taken at St. Damien’s is automatically transmitted to Rothpearl and his team, who respond within an hour. And in March, Rothpearl donated new equipment to St. Damien’s, which upgraded the server for digital radiology, boosting its transmission speed and multiplying its storage capacity. Full Story

E-prescription use triples from 2008 to 2009
The number of prescriptions processed electronically tripled from 2008 to 2009, largely due to government incentives and increased adoption by larger clinics and health systems, according to a report by Alexandria, VA-based Surescripts. In 2009, there were 191 million electronic prescriptions, up from 68 million in 2008 and 29 million in 2007, while the number of prescribers transmitting electronic prescriptions increased to 156,000 in 2009, up from 74,000 in 2008, the report notes. Surescripts also attributes the e-prescription gains to the Certification Commission for Health IT’s expansion of certification programs, and government and non-governmental education and awareness programs. Full Story

Senators ask CMS to revise or relax ‘meaningful use’ requirements
More than one-fourth of U.S. senators have signed and sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Charlene Frizzera, requesting changes to the agency’s proposed rule on the “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs). In the letter, initiated by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the bipartisan group of 27 senators state that few hospitals will be able to meet all 23 EHR objectives or requirements necessary to qualify for incentive payments. The senators want a more gradual implementation process and relaxation or revision of many of the requirements, which are slated to take effect by 2015. Full Story

Scottish government offers $6.1 million for ‘vital’ telecare for elderly
The Scottish government is allocating $6.1 million [USD] for telecare technology designed to help elderly persons receive medical care while in their homes. According to public health minister Shona Robison, every local authority will receive up to $183,000 for “vital” hi-tech devices such as rumbling pillows that can alert elderly people with hearing difficulties to fires. Ultimately, up to $8.2 million could be spent on medical devices through the program, as local health authorities and councils are required to provide matching funding, Robison said. The government has invested almost $25 million in telecare technology since 2006. Full Story

Guillaume Herve, president of CAE Healthcare, and Victor Viegas, interim CEO of Immersion Corp., announced that CAE had acquired part of Immersion’s medical simulation business unit and licensed its TouchSense Technology…Pramod K. Gaur, PhD, recently joined UnitedHealth Group as Vice President Telehealth…Dr. Wendy Graham, lead physician of the Blue Sky Family Team (North Bay, Ontario), is actively conducting the Mihealth pilot project using Diversinet’s Health Application built on their MobiSecure Wallet and Vault technology…Alfred Spector, Google vice president of research and special initiatives, gave a talk at the American College of Healthcare Executives’ annual conference, providing reasons why he believes patients should have control over the content in their electronic health records…Roy Simpson, vice president of health IT vendor Cerner, gave a talk at a nursing technology conference at the Medical College of Georgia on how use of health IT by nurses can help improve patient care…Dr. Ronan Collins and Professor Des O’Neill, both with the Tallaght Hospital in Ireland, discuss their use of telemedicine for stroke patients in The Irish Times…Please send us your news on Movers and Shakers in the field.

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