M.L. Baker

Pango Networks Inc. announced Tuesday the launch of a new Web-based framework that can let hospitals know where expensive pieces of equipment are at any time. The framework accepts RFID and other signals onto standards-based networks such as Wi-Fi. Though currently used to track assets in only about one in 10 health care organizations, this […]

Over the next five years, health information technology is likely to focus more and more on administrative functions like claims processing than on clinical functions, like viewing patient care and test results. That’s the conclusion of a group of Harvard Medical School faculty and clinicians established to predict the status of networked health information in […]

How do you take your daily medicine if you can’t remember what prescriptions you have? That’s the situation facing many Katrina evacuees with chronic conditions, who now have no record of what drugs they were taking before they fled their homes. Close to a million people displaced by Hurricane Katrina now lack medical records. The […]

A surge in open-source technology offers many businesses a potent combination of power and low cost, but the pharmaceutical industry remains well behind the curve. That was the message at a session on data visualization and integration at a semiannual meeting of the nation’s chemists in Washington last week. No one thinks open source can […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. intends to become another in a string of giant IT companies pledging to improve health care. At the Tuesday, gloomy music played as huge screens flashed dire predictions about the aging population and rising health care costs. Then Louis Burns, general manager of Intel’s digital health group, strode onto the stage to […]

Uncoordinated efforts between hospitals, vendors, shippers and suppliers are keeping RFID out of hospitals, concludes a new report by Spyglass Consulting Group. Nonetheless, a few applications are poised to become mainstream. Ten percent of HCOs (health care organizations) in the survey use RFID to track expensive mobile equipment. However, 45 percent of those interviewed expected […]

IBM hopes to be the backbone of information-based medicine—without developing specialized software applications. The company recently announced two deals following this strategy. On Friday, genomics and proteomics company Protana Inc. announced that it had picked IBM partner Turboworx Inc. to automate certain kinds of data processing and integrate analyses of multiple forms of data. Also […]

An outbreak of bird flu in humans need not become a pandemic, conclude two papers published this week in prestigious science journals. Scientists used computer models to predict how surveillance and containment efforts could prevent the worldwide spread of disease caused by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Though the disease has led to the deaths […]

President Bush signed a bill Friday allowing clinicians to report medical errors anonymously. The information will be collected into databases maintained by patient-safety organizations and analyzed for clues as to how to reduce mistakes. The move follows criticism of the FDA that it does not monitor drug safety sufficiently and legislation to limit awards in […]

Consumers are willing to pay as much as $60 a year for EMRs, according to a Web survey released this week by the consultancy group Accenture. But companies may not be able to provide the service necessary to make them useful, implies another Web survey of IT executives by CIOInsight. The Accenture study surveyed about […]

Market-based solutions require a market. But this market need not be simply the average consumer. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has tried to stimulate industry investment in medicines for the developing world by guaranteeing a market for resulting products. The understanding is “If you build it, I will buy.” The government has done the […]

When technicians place computers in patient exam rooms, the position of patients and clinicians should matter more than that of wires and electrical outlets. That’s one common-sense conclusion from one of the first studies to evaluate the impact of computer technology on interactions between patients and physicians. The study analyzed 54 patient visits conducted by […]