Canada sets up e-health innovation lab
The collaboratory focuses on the development of interoperable EHR systems. Products will be tested in what the center describes as the first multitasking simulation laboratory dedicated to the study of e-health. The lab is equipped with multimedia technologies, props and stage seats, which can simulate a variety of health care environments.

Request for Information from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' regarding the Role in Personal Health Records
CMS is interested in identifying its appropriate role, potential technical or contractual problem areas, eliminating any unnecessary constraining requirements, and obtaining recommendations to enhance the initiative's success.

An Internet-Based Patient-Provider Communication System: Randomized Controlled Trial
Intervention group patients, who had access to a patient portal that enabled them to send secure messages directly to their physicians and to request appointments, prescription refills, and referrals. reported improved communication with the clinic (portal: 44% “a little better” or “a lot better;” control: 12%; P < .001) and higher satisfaction with overall care (portal: 59%.“very good” or “excellent;” control: 48%; P = .04). Portal group patients also reported higher satisfaction with each of the portal’s services. Physicians received 1 portal message per day for every 250 portal patients. Total telephone call volume was not affected. Patients were more likely to send informational and psychosocial messages by portal than by phone.

Challenges to implementing the national programme for information technology (NPfIT): a qualitative study
The trusts varied in their circumstances, which may affect their ability to implement the NPfIT. The process of implementation has been suboptimal, leading to reports of low morale by the NHS staff responsible for implementation. The overall timetable is unrealistic, and trusts are uncertain about their implementation schedules. Short term benefits alone are unlikely to persuade NHS staff to adopt the national programme enthusiastically, and some may experience a loss of electronic functionality in the short term. The sociocultural challenges to implementing the NPfIT are as daunting as the technical and logistical ones.

Decision Support Software Matures: Technology helps users process key clinical and administrative data to improve care and reduce costs
Decision support as a concept has fluid boundaries. In the narrowest sense, it includes software that analyzes clinical, financial and administrative data. The results can be used to develop patient care or administrative guidelines and can be delivered in real time to the point of care or incorporated into larger data analysis tasks. More broadly, decision support can mean a single application or multiple information systems, such as lab, pharmacy and radiology, feeding a data warehouse and populating analytic software.

Hospital's design a healthy start -- Architects focus on minimizing infection, maximizing patient safety
The people involved in the hospital's design - ranging from nurses to national experts on health care quality - were guided by the tenet that systems, not people, cause errors. And they drew heavily on lessons from engineering, particularly the specialty that looks at how errors occur. They knew that increasing standardization, lessening fatigue, limiting noise and providing quick access to information would help prevent errors.

National Quality Forum Endorses Voluntary Consensus Standards for Standardizing Measures of Physician-focused Ambulatory Care
NQF approved 36 performance measures and 3 recommendations. These standards represent measures of structure, process, and outcome that have been linked by evidence to quality of care for ambulatory care. Additionally, each measure was evaluated against NQF-endorsed measure evaluation criteria of importance, scientific soundness, feasibility, and usability.

eHealth-related Blog
Yet another excellent source of up to date information on health information technology.