mCare mobile telephone-based secure messaging system developed by the Army
Colonel Ronald Poropatich, MD, Deputy Director of the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, recently testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and the Health Subcommittee, describing a system the Army has developed, deployed and is currently evaluating that uses a secure mobile telephone system to send messages to soldiers assigned to Community-Based Warrior in Transition Units. Dubbed "mCare," to-date the system has delivered over 18,500 messages to over 300 soldiers. The system is set up to work on a variety of phone models and wireless carriers, but full integration of the military's personal health record has not yet been implemented. Full Story

SOS 4 Life launches iPhone-based medical record app
SOS 4 Life has announced the launch of a "Health Records" application for the iPhone. The program allows users to store medical information such as allergies, medical conditions and medication in a health record on the iPhone and then translates the records into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. The app requires no Internet connection and can be used by people with conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure or allergies, which can be easily misdiagnosed, particularly when there is a language barrier. The application currently has more than 700 conditions pre-programmed into its multi-lingual database. The application was designed in collaboration with more than 20 medical practitioners in Europe, led by Dr. Heike Unverhau. The current price of the app in the iTunes AppStore is $3.99. Full Story

White House releases draft national strategy for cyber security
The White House recently developed and published a draft national strategy for improving and strengthening identity authentication, to be used to improve the security of electronic data transactions-including private health information. The plan is called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, and the "identity ecosystem" it outlines would decrease the need for passwords and logins by providing secure, interoperable digital identities. Initially the program is expected to be implemented for government services before moving into the healthcare industry. With hopes that President Obama will approve the final plan by October, the Department of Homeland Security is accepting public comments through July 19th. Full Story

Faith Regional Health Services jumps feet first into electronic health records
Faith Regional Health Services, in Norfolk, Nebraska, fast-tracked meeting the government's meaningful use requirements for electronic health records with the assistance of Quammen Healthcare Consultants. Within six months the 166-bed acute care facility went live with the EHR system utilizing EDGE (Electronic Data to Gain Excellence), Quammen's EHR system, which is powered by Soarian Clinicals from Siemens. Jim Sinek, president and CEO at Faith Regional, notes that on the first day of operation 69% of orders were placed electronically. This exceeds the 10% computerized physician order entry (CPOE) adoption that the government is expecting providers to attain. Full Story

Telemedicine options for high-res fiber-optic fluorescence imaging system
Biomedical engineers and researchers at Rice University and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center made modifications to a digital single-lens reflex camera (dSLR), adding an LED light, an objective lens, a fiber-optic bundle, and proved that it can be used to capture sub-cellular images non-invasively and in real-time. The device costs about $2,000 and is powerful enough to enable doctors to easily distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells by viewing the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Researchers demonstrated its use in oral cancer cell cultures. Rebecca Richards-Kortum of Rice University and the study's senior author said, "A portable, battery-powered device like this could be particularly useful for global health." In countries where conventional diagnostic technology is very expensive, the device "could save many lives," she added. Full Story

Artificial Life to launch telemed glucose monitor application
Artificial Life, Inc. announced their plans to launch a mobile telemedicine glucose monitor, GluCoMo. The diabetes management solution leverages Artificial Life's OPUS-M platform and is expected to officially launch this month. The application allows users, whether diabetics, caregivers, doctors, or hospitals, to utilize smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile Internet devices to share data. The product is promoted as having both front-end and back-end capabilities, which include a mobile client and web portal for the front-end component. The front-end can support most major smartphone platforms and allows users to track data such as blood sugar levels, calorie intake, personal activities and medicine intake. The back-end component, which is powered by the OPUS-M technology, allows friends, families, and caregivers to share critical information and provide input with each other. The front-end mobile component will initially be released as a free mobile application and service, with a higher-end product requiring additional fees. Full Story

Harris Corporation working to improve military's bidirectional HIE
The Harris Corporation, acting as a subcontractor to Evolvent Technologies, Inc., is utilizing its open-source CONNECT solution to modernize the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) interface. The BHIE is used to securely share patient information between the two agencies. The new interface adds several new features, including the ability to transfer medical imagery and associated studies, as well as "artifacts," which are any type of captured imagery that is not diagnostic medical imagery. The "artifacts" typically are found in the DoD's global Healthcare Artifact and Image Management Solution system, and may include electronic scans of paper medical records, photographs and handwritten physician notes. Full Story

FTC delays enforcement of Red Flags Rule
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has agreed to delay enforcement of the Red Flags Rule yet again, this time until a federal appeals court can rule on a lawsuit brought by the American Bar Association. Physician compliance may be delayed into 2011. The Red Flags Rule has been repeatedly delayed due to lawsuits filed by various organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Osteopathic Association, and the Medical Society for the District of Columbia. The Red Flags Rule is designed to decrease medical identity theft by forcing businesses, including physicians and healthcare institutions, to implement written Identity Theft Prevention Programs. Full Story

Lens-free cell phone microscope starts field trials
Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and a researcher at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute, has developed a prototype of a cell phone microscope. Having recently won awards from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Geographic, and the National Science Foundation, the lens-less imaging system is expected to begin field testing in Africa this summer using funds received from the three major awards. The imaging system, involving a miniature, lens-less microscope that can fit onto a cell phone, uses a diffraction process that lights up the sample using a light-emitting diode (LED) and a detector array that captures the images and records it. Because it is phone-based, images can then be transmitted wirelessly. Full Story

PetRays veterinarian telemed company, finalist for Stevie awards
The Woodlands, Texas-based PetRays Veterinary Telemedicine Consultants, was a finalist for a Stevie Award in The 2010 (8th Annual) American Business Awards. The company, founded by Melissa Fields Tugwell in 2006, was a finalist in three categories: Most Innovative Company of the Year-Up to 100 Employees-All Other Industries; Best Overall Company of the Year-Up to 100 Employees-All Other Industries; and Fastest-Growing Company of the Year-Up to 100 Employees-All Other Industries. PetRays consists of 42 staff and veterinary specialists. The company provides telemedicine services by having Board Certified veterinary specialists available 24/7, focusing on access to small rural vet clinics, emergency clinics that need specialist consults, and non-profit organizations or charitable organizations like animal shelters. The Stevie Awards are one of the world's premier business awards, given out to recognize and generate public awareness of excellence in the workplace. Full Story

WellPoint announces security breach of health information
Insurer WellPoint recently informed 470,000 individual policyholders that there had been a major security breath of private health information. Sensitive data such as medical records, Social Security numbers, and credit card information might have been exposed. WellPoint indicates that the breach occurred as the result of an online program that enables individuals to track the progress of their coverage application. A third-party vendor, which had performed work on the website, had mistakenly stated that all security measures were in place, when, in fact, they were not. Within 12 hours of learning about the problem WellPoint had fixed it. The WellPoint security breach hit the news with several other high-profile private health information breaches of the Airmen Medical Support Systems database kept by the Federal Aviation Administration; a possible breach of Texas residents' confidential cancer registry; and a potential breach of the University of Maine's student records. Full Story

Movers & SHAKERS

Joseph M. Smith, MD, PhD, Chief Medical and Science Officer at the West Wireless Health Institute in La Jolla, California, testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and the Health Subcommittee, suggesting that the VA's Care Coordination/Home Telehealth program needs to innovate...Gennady Sukhikh, Director of the Kulakov Federal Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Perinatology (Russia), met with Scott Radloff, Director of USAID's Office of Population and Reproductive Health, to discuss the use of video conferencing to review cases of maternal and infant mortality...Dr. Scott Parker, medical director of Baptist Easley Hospital (Easley, SC), announced they were the first hospital to join a state program to use telemedicine technology to treat mentally ill patients admitted to its ER...Tom Miller, Iowa Attorney General, received a letter from Kansas anti-abortion group Operation Rescue urging his office to proceed with a criminal investigation into a so-called "telemedicine abortion pill administration" by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland... Professor Sam Leinster, dean of the School of Medicine at the University of East Anglia (UK) organized and hosted a conference dubbed "Telemedicine 2015"...Dr. Bart Demaerschalk, with the Mayo Clinic, discussed how he uses his smartphone and telemedicine apps to assess stroke victims on a recent KAAL-TV (ABC affiliate) news program...Governor Bob McDonnell, Virginia, laid out details of Health and Human Resources and Technology legislation that took effect July 1st, including telemedicine coverage for Virginians...Please send us your news on Movers and Shakers in the field.

• Seventh Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition
  July 19-20, 2010 - San Diego, CA
  Networks, platforms and applications for technology-enabled participatory medicine. Special focus on remote monitoring, home telehealth, mhealth and ehealth for chronic care management and wellness promotion. Featuring an aging services educational track. Supporting organizations include: AAHSA, CAST and DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance. www.tcbi.org



• Global TeleHealth 2010
  November 10-12, 2010 - Perth, Western Australia
  More Info
  

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