Building the Work Force for Health Information Transformation
As the transition to an electronic health record gains momentum, healthcare delivery will need to dramatically reinvent the way it collects, processes, and uses health information. This will require a substantial investment in healthcare infrastructure in both public and private sectors. It will require an investment of capital, time, and resources. Most importantly, it will require an investment in people.

Connecting for Health says a prototype for exchanging electronic health information has had successful tests
Connecting for Health announced today that its three-state prototype has achieved an important first milestone toward the secure, authorized, and private exchange of health information, based on a series of tests conducted throughout 2005. The prototype, initiated in January of 2005 and announced last June, involves very different, independent local networks serving diverse communities in Boston, Indianapolis, and Mendocino County, CA.

The Fourth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence Study -- February 2006
For the fourth year in a row, HealthGrades researched the overall quality at each of the nation’s more than 5,000 nonfederal hospitals. This study identifies hospitals that place in the top five percent in the nation in terms of risk-adjusted mortality and complication rates across a wide range of procedures and diagnoses, indicating institutional success in achieving high-quality outcomes.

Epocrates Announces Free Integration with EMR and Other Healthcare IT Developers
Epocrates announced that its widely adopted mobile and web-based clinical applications can now be linked to products developed by healthcare information system (HIS) partners. Epocrates Linx allows HIS vendors to download the Epocrates application program interface (API) to create a customized user interface within their system. Vendors have the ability to embed hyperlinks within their HIS systems that will lead users directly to the relevant information in Epocrates' reference applications, increasing efficiency and convenience for clinicians.Epocrates Linx allows HIS vendors to download the Epocrates application program interface (API) to create a customized user interface within their system. Vendors have the ability to embed hyperlinks within their HIS systems that will lead users directly to the relevant information in Epocrates' reference applications, increasing efficiency and convenience for clinicians.

VistA® / CPRS Demo Site
Once you have been logged into the VistA® demo system, you will be allowed to select a patient from the demo database. When you select a patient, you will then be able to move on and open up the electronic cover sheet of the patient record and begin to view patient data and interact with the CPRS demo system.

Use of a mobile phone to track a person
Your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. If you have any reason to suspect that your phone might have been out of your sight, even for five minutes, and there is anyone who might want to track you: call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you.

Issues of trust and ethics in computerized clinical decision support systems
A clinician's level of trust in clinical technologies to support decision making is affected by how knowledge is represented in these tools, their ability to make reasonable decisions, and how they are designed. Furthermore, ethical tensions occur if these systems do not promote standards, if clinicians do not understand how to use these systems, and when professional relationships are affected.

A stochastic control program to predict outcome and to support therapeutic decisions: a preliminary report
The program continuously displayed the noninvasive hemodynamic data and the patient's predicted survival probability (SP) that was based on the patient's diagnosis, covariates, and hemodynamic data. The accuracy of the SP at the initial resuscitation on admission to the emergency department (ED) was evaluated by the actual outcome at hospital discharge. The therapeutic decision support program evaluated the relative effectiveness of various therapies on based on their hemodynamic and SP responses and outcome of patients with similar clinical-hemodynamic states. The calculated Survival Probability (SP) of survivors averaged 81 +/- 1.4% in the first 24-hour observation period. It was 58 +/- 2.2% for nonsurvivors during this period. Misclassifications were 10/100 or 10%.

A comparison of graphical and textual presentations of time series data to support medical decision making in the neonatal intensive care unit
In terms of the content of responses there was a clear advantage for the Text condition, with participants tending to choose more of the appropriate actions when the information was presented as text rather than as graphs. In terms of the speed of response there was no difference between the Graphs and Text conditions. There was no significant difference between the staff groups in terms of speed or content of responses. In contrast to the objective measures of performance, the majority of participants reported a subjective preference for the Graphs condition.