M.L. Baker

Patients covered by UnitedHealth Group will soon receive patient identification cards that they can use as debit cards for medical expenses and that doctors can use to access patients’ personal health information electronically. The banking industry has seen health savings accounts as a way to add customers and expand services, arguing that the software currently […]

New legislation and certification programs will boost state and local government spending on health and welfare IT from $7.6 billion in fiscal year 2006 to $12.2 billion by fiscal year 2011, concludes a report from Input, a firm that helps companies do business with government. In particular, the next 12 to 18 months will prove […]

Online health management “will become the new house call,” said Alden Solovy, executive editor of Hospitals & Health Networks, which just published its eighth annual list of the nation’s “most wired” hospitals. Four-fifths of the “most wired” hospitals offer patients personal health records into which they can enter and manage their health information, said Solovy. […]

A year after Hurricane Katrina disrupted thousands of lives across the South, a coalition of health IT leaders has outlined how to help evacuees get necessary medications and better-informed care. The nonprofit Markle Foundation, a well-regarded think tank that analyzes business, logistic, and policy barriers in the adoption of health IT, on June 13 released […]

Fewer hospitals and health care facilities are complying with federal laws to protect patient privacy, and more patients are refusing to sign forms to release health information, according to a survey by the American Health Information Management Association. Such trends bode ill for the development of a national electronic exchange of health data, warned Dan […]

Giant GE Healthcare has teamed up with 85-employee MobileAccess Inc. to enable hospitals to use a common infrastructure for their wireless applications, such as cell phones, pagers, public safety radio and Wi-Fi. A midsize hospital could have as many as 15 different wireless systems, including pagers, and a multihospital chain could have as many as […]

The biggest innovation in health IT of 2006 has nary a wire, a chip or a radio signal. If 2004 was rightly hailed as beginning of the dot.gov boom in health IT, 2005 must be hailed as the year of committees. 2005 saw the Department of Health and Human Services’ Michael Leavitt moving into some […]

Proposed exceptions to anti-kickback laws won’t be enough to allay hospitals’ fears about helping community physicians adopt health information technology, according to several health IT proponents and health care organizations. The public comment period for proposed changes ended this week with the American Hospital Association, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, the Health Information […]

Researchers poring over brain scans may soon have an easier time integrating that data with information about the genes and proteins that make brain cells tick. A software vendor and a nonprofit group are teaming up to create NeuroCommons.org, a free, shared repository of data and other tools to speed research on brain function and […]

Wireless pressure sensors are being used to warn doctors that a blood vessel is liable to burst. On Monday, the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center announced that it had implanted the Endosure sensor in patients who were receiving stents to protect against aortic aneurysms. The sensor, approved by the FDA last month, promises a […]

Health information technology promises better care at lower costs, but it can’t fix a broken system. Giving doctors more access to computers won’t, by itself, give the underinsured more access to doctors. The Department of Health and Human servcies provides a steady drumbeat of health IT projects: coordinating standards, providing seed money, laying the groundwork […]

Health care systems across the developed world are struggling to coordinate care and keep patients informed about what their medications do. That’s the conclusion of a report released this month by the Commonwealth Fund. The study surveyed hundreds of “sicker” adults in each of six countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and […]