World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google
The concept behind the WDL is to use public and private money to create a virtual library giving anyone access to the world's rare and unique cultural materials. The plan will expand upon work already done for the American Memory Project, a Library of Congress effort that has been digitizing American documents, images, sound recordings and more. The collection now contains more than 10 million items that can be searched or browsed as a whole. The World Digital Library is intended to go well beyond American material, however.

Fundamental Flaws In Many Medical Studies Must Be Fixed In Order To Catch Signs Of Harm
Only by analyzing results using a statistical method that considers several factors at once -- for instance, overall heart attack risk, rather than just individual risk factors such as age -- will researchers truly be able to see how the risks and benefits of a treatment vary from patient to patient, the study suggests.

Addressing work force needs critical to health information technology success
The current lack of a comprehensive plan for training the healthcare work force to use new technologies is a potentially serious rate-limiting factor in the adoption and effective use of electronic health records (EHR) and other health IT tools, warns a group of experts gathered last week at the first-ever Work Force for Health Information Transformation: A Strategy Summit in Washington, DC.

Bring Order to CPOE With 10 Make or Break Steps (and 5 myths)
Even CPOE's most ardent supporters acknowledge the technology's drawbacks. For one thing, CPOE requires tight integration with the lab, radiology, pharmacy and other specialty systems used to process orders. Standardized nomenclature is a must. While CPOE changes workflows across departments, it is most disruptive to physicians. Therein lies the rub.

Medical records going paperless
The initiative was spearheaded by the Mid-Valley Independent Physicians Association, a nonprofit that represents 485 physicians. The physician association is offering financial, technical and other types of support to doctors to aid in adoption of the integrated electronic medical record and practice management system. The budget for the program is $8 million during the first three years. Participation on the part of area physicians will be voluntary.

A blanket of SNOMED
The gathering momentum for electronic health records (EHRs) in public hospitals is revealing the nagging realization that EHRs are only marginally useful if they can't communicate with records created by other departments or health care organizations. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the widespread use of health records is medical terminology. Individual organizations and clinicians use a variety of names to identify the same diseases. But if an EHR system could understand that "pneumonia" and "pneumanitis" referred to the same ailment, physicians and patients would see big benefits in better outcomes and disease prevention.