Clinical Computing and Informatics News

"Plug and Play" Hospitals Medical devices that exchange data could make hospitals safer
Device interoperability could also reduce the large number of false alarms that nurses must contend with. "If you go into an ICU, it's a madhouse," says Szolovits. "There are alarms going off constantly, because each alarm is separate from the others, so none of them have an integrated view of what's going on with the patient." If the data from medical monitors were integrated, he says, alarms would be more likely to indicate something truly important.

Surveillance Sans Frontières: Internet-Based Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence and the HealthMap Project
HealthMap is a member of a new generation of surveillance systems that mine media sources in near real-time for reports of infectious disease outbreaks, including GPHIN [10,12], MedISys, developed by the Directorate General Health and Consumer Affairs of the European Commission [31], the US government-funded Argus [32], and EpiSPIDER [33]. While Internet-based online media sources are becoming a critical tool for global infectious disease surveillance, important challenges still need to be addressed. Ultimately, the monitoring of diverse media-based sources will augment epidemic intelligence with information derived outside the traditional public health infrastructure, yielding a more comprehensive and timely global view of emerging infectious disease threats.

A treasure-trove of data in the UK National Health Service is set to energize biomedical research
Perhaps the most significant move for biomedical science at the NHS lies in opening up the ocean of patients' data that the organization has collected over the decades. Public consultations are now beginning that, favourable soundings suggest, will lead to ways by which researchers can readily find appropriate patients for research and clinical trials, and can gain access to data whose sources are anonymized but traceable subject to the patient's permission. In particular, the national extent and depth of those data will provide researchers in academia and industry with a globally unique resource for highly targeted studies and clinical trials — a key element of translational medicine.

The Impact of Prevention on Reducing the Burden of Cardiovascular Disease
Approximately 78% of adults aged 20-80 years alive today in the United States are candidates for at least one prevention activity. If everyone received the activities for which they are eligible, myocardial infarctions and strokes would be reduced by 63% and 31%, respectively. If more feasible levels of performance are assumed, myocardial infarctions and strokes would be reduced 36% and 20%, respectively. Implementation of all prevention activities would add {approx}221 million life-years and 244 million quality-adjusted life-years to the US adult population over the coming 30 years, or an average of 1.3 years of life expectancy for all adults. Of the specific prevention activities, the greatest benefits to the US population come from providing aspirin to high-risk individuals, controlling pre-diabetes, weight reduction in obese individuals, lowering blood pressure in people with diabetes, and lowering LDL cholesterol in people with existing coronary artery disease (CAD). As currently delivered and at current prices, most prevention activities are expensive when considering direct medical costs; smoking cessation is the only prevention strategy that is cost-saving over 30 years.

DEA proposes rules to allow e-prescribing of controlled substances
The proposed rules, as explained in a 62-page Federal Register notice today, require doctors to use two forms of identification for each transmission of e-prescriptions for controlled substances in addition to an annual audit of each system by a certified public accountancy.

One answer to EMR data entry: Hire a scribe to do it
Here's how it works: The scribe takes notes during the clinical exam and enters them into the appropriate place in the EMR, relieving the doctor of the note-taking and data-entry responsibilities. The common criticism of medical scribes is that their use adds one more layer of bureaucracy, and keeps physicians from unlocking the potential of their EMRs because they're never interacting with them. But medical scribe companies counter that they help physicians interact more with patients, because scribes handle the technology.