Unexpected Increased Mortality After Implementation of a Commercially Sold Computerized Physician Order Entry System
Univariate analysis revealed that mortality rate significantly increased from 2.80% (39 of 1394) before CPOE implementation to 6.57% (36 of 548) after CPOE implementation. Multivariate analysis revealed that CPOE remained independently associated with increased odds of mortality (odds ratio: 3.28; 95% confidence interval: 1.94–5.55) after adjustment for other mortality covariables. Note: While the increase in mortality is truely worrisome and one could argue that the study's design does not allow one to prove cause an effect, after careful reading it appears to me that errors in the implementation and management process are much more to blame than the CPOE system is. Ed.

Accelerating Transformation through Health Information Technology
Our goal is a fully interoperable, interconnected healthcare system where all stakeholders can exchange patient information in real time to use at the point of care. As industry stakeholders come together in communities across the country, we will find answers to the pressing questions of financing, interoperability, privacy and security, cultural change, and health management. Such a system will indeed improve consumer health, reduce costs, and build a brighter future for America.

Trust and sources of health information: the impact of the internet and its implications for health care providers: findings from the first health information national trends survey.
63.0% of the US adult population in 2003 reported ever going online, with 63.7% of the online population having looked for health information for themselves or others at least once in the previous 12 months. Despite newly available communication channels, physicians remained the most highly trusted information source to patients, with 62.4% of adults expressing a lot of trust in their physicians. When asked where they preferred going for specific health information, 49.5% reported wanting to go to their physicians first. When asked where they actually went, 48.6% reported going online first, with only 10.9% going to their physicians first.

Merging EHR and EDC: Could Pharma, Hospital IT Converge?
The hypothesized convergence of clinical applications and databases for drug development, clinical trials, hospitals, and physicians is both closer and more distant. Most physician-office and hospital data resides in EHR systems that are not 21 CFR Part 11 compliant. Ordinary patient data is often unprotected by audit trails and rife with errors, jargon, and other flotsam that would appall the FDA. Just integrating handwritten patient records, not to mention dictated physician notes, will be arduous.

HL7 to Develop Continuity of Care Record Clinical Document Architecture Implementation Guide
HL7 today announced that it will create an implementation guide for expressing ASTM International’s Continuity of Care Record (CCR) data set in an HL7 Version 3 (V3) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), Release 2 (R2) document. This implementation guide will afford the United States healthcare industry an incremental but immediate step toward the level of interoperability needed for a national Electronic Health Record (EHR).

The Candid CIO
This is the Blog of Will Weider, CIO of Affinity Health System. This is the place where he shares what he has learned through mistakes and other crazy things in the life of a healthcare CIO. (Note: I realize I probably shouldn't be plugging the competition, but he just seems to make so much sense. Ed.)

HIT Rumor Mill
An interesting site with several interesting rumors surrounding potential takeovers, product developments, new deals and cancellation of existing deals.