Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In a nutshell those are the comments made in January by Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt at the J.P. Morgan Annual Health Care Conference. The Meaningful Use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over… You can now hear physicians groups burdened by the inflexible EMR mandate rejoicing. But then Slavitt continues. and replaced with…
Wearable technology is all the rage. There was even a recent paper in JAMA about wearable technology. However, will wearables soon to be old news? What is the future? Joe Kvedar gives his thoughts on the topic: Thus, we have plentiful pedometer apps…We’ve also solved how to run these apps in the background without disrupting the…
Electronic Health Records can help doctors access the information they need regardless of whether they have treated you before. Setting up integrated health care systems or systems where EHR networks are interoperable can improve this facility across healthcare organizations. However, this approach is not without risks, as shown by this recent hacking episode at Anthem.…
How have different countries developed their health IT systems? A paper by Adler-Milstein et. al in Health Affairs provides some insight. I summarize their findings below. Australia. In the 1990s-early 2000s, the government supported the adoption of EHRs through federal incentives to general practitioners. These efforts focused primarily on EHRs with e-prescribing. In 2005 the…
Apple recently unveiled its smart watch. The watch not only is a mini-computer, but it can help improve your health. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktujsc4ZUTo Pharmafile reports: The watch comes with an app that promises to calculate all kinds of data including heart rate, calories burned and other metrics in one place – and can also count how many…
Typically, when Apple unveils a new operating system much of the talk is about new features, faster processing speeds and new visualizations. Apple’s unveiling of their most recent operating system is no different. However, this release has a unique focus: health. Apple is getting into the quantified self health movement with their new Health app. The app…
HealthPartners argues that the answer is yes. In a 2013 Health Affairs article, they argue the following: HealthPartners in Minnesota launched an online clinic called virtuwell in late 2010. After more than 40,000 cases, we report an average $88 lower cost per episode compared with care received in traditional settings, strong indicators of clinical effectiveness,…