Backblog—eHealth
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Epocrates Study - One in five physicians likely to purchase Apple iPad February 9, 2010 By Alan Brookstone Categories: General eHealth Software Companies AppleInsider - This week, Epocrates Inc., the developer of mobile applications used by more than 900,000 healthcare professionals worldwide, revealed a new study of more than 350 clinicians conducted in the wake of Apple's iPad announcement. Among those surveyed, 9 percent said they plan to buy an iPad when it is immediately available, and another 13 percent intend to purchase one in the first year. In addition, another 38 percent of respondents said they are interested in the iPad, but would like to obtain more information about the product before they decide whether or not they will purchase. With a belief the iPad will gain traction in the health care community, Epocrates also announced this week that it intends to customize its clinical reference application, which is already available for the iPhone and iPod touch, for the iPad. One in five physicians likely to purchase Apple iPad - study. Do you think that the iPad will be popular amongst physicians? If you are already an iPhone user, would you consider purchasing an iPad? Alan Brookstone Canadian EMR 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Patient Centered Care and the Healthcare Ecosystem January 13, 2010 By Michael Martineau Categories: General eHealth One of my favourite keynote speeches at the annual eHealth conference was delivered several years ago in Quebec City by Andre Picard, the Globe and Mail reporter. He spoke in layman’s terms about the need for electronic health records and made, what I felt, were some excellent points about the need for electronic health records. This past fall Mr. Picard spoke at a “Breakfast with the Chiefs” event. His talk, “What Do Patients Want” addressed what he felt were the under represented views of Canadian patients. http://www.longwoods.com/product.php? productid=21238&page=1 During his talk, Mr. Picard noted that “we do have these wonderful pockets of care along the way, but our connections between them fail all too often“. He stated that “there’s no reason that we can’t deliver a continuum of care, because we have all the elements in place, but we’re just not connecting them“. I think that Mr. Picard is making the same mistake in logic that people trying to deliver eHealth solutions make … he is assuming that we have a healthcare “system”. As I have argued in past blog posts, we don’t have a single “healthcare system” but, rather, a healthcare “ecosystem”. Each of the individual elements in this ecosystem operate independently, each with their own agenda and budget. We must recognize this reality and stop trying to deploy eHealth applications as though all the various organizations are part of a single enterprise. Instead, provincial and national organizations such as eHealth Ontario and Canada Health Infoway need to focus on putting in place the elements necessary to encourage and facilitate the exchange of information such as interoperability standards. Only when we approach the continuum of care as an ecosystem instead of an enterprise will we realize our goal of true patient centered care. Michael Martineau eHealth Musings 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Call for Papers - AHIC 2010 *Deadline Extended to Jan 11, 2010* January 6, 2010 By Alan Brookstone Categories: General eHealth National Institutes of Health Informatics - AHIC 2010: Advances in Health Informatics Conference - Call for Papers is Open! The First Virtual Health Informatics Conference in Canada This inaugural Canadian conference will be held April 28 -30, 2010 at the University of Waterloo's Health Sciences Campus in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada ... and accessible via the Internet across the globe! The conference will focus on advances in Health Informatics research and education. AHIC will have fully peer-reviewed content and a single stream of presentations with an embedded think-tank session. Most importantly, it will distinguish itself by being a 'green' conference that supports both onsite and virtual participation (including presentation), and we are targeting a global audience. The Call for Papers is open. Researchers, educators and students are encouraged to make their submissions and to attend the conference. The CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE has been EXTENDED to Jan 11, 2010 - 12 Midnight Mountain Standard Time (MST). The Categories for submission include both Foundational Contributions of novel informatics concept, methods, and tools, and the Application and Evaluation of informatics within the practical, day-to-day health care practice and education. Conference Themes include: (1) Progress in Health Informatics in foundational and applied research, (2) Advances in Health Informatics education, and (3) New developments in evidence-based eHealth policy development and implementation or healthcare practice. The best papers from this conference will be invited to submit their work for publication in a special issue of the electronic Journal of Health Informatics (eJHI) http://ejhi.net/ continuing to support our principles of open access and being green. For more information, please go to the AHIC 2010 Conference Website - http://ahic.nihi.ca/index.php Alan Brookstone Canadian EMR 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Social Media and Healthcare December 23, 2009 By Michael Martineau Categories: General eHealth I recently completed a discussion paper on Consumer eHealth for a client. In my research, I found that the rapid adoption of social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter by the general public has not gone unnoticed by healthcare organizations and providers. Ed Bennett, a hospital web manager, tracks U.S. hospital use of social networking tools. According to Mr. Bennett’s blog, 473 U.S. hospitals are currently using YouTube, Facebook, twitter, or a blog (up from 410 when I completed the report six weeks ago). An article[1] in the Telemedicine and e-Health Journal listed offers some thoughts on how Twitter might be employed by healthcare organizations:
I noticed this morning that the Ontario Hospital Association is hosting a workshop on social media entitled “Social Media Demystified: Best Practices and Setting Strategy with Confidence” on 21 January 2010. Clearly there is interest in the Ontario health sector and I look forward to seeing how Ontario healthcare organizations embrace social media. Michael Martineau
[1] “Twittering Healthcare: Social Media and Medicine”, Telemedicine and e-Health Journal, Vol 15, No. 6, July/August 2009, 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Does Canada have Federated EMR Paralysis? December 11, 2009 By Alan Brookstone Categories: General eHealth Will geographic challenges and the decentralized nature of Canadian provinces and territories ultimately be the undoing of any attempts towards a national EMR strategy? At a time that hard decisions need to be made regarding a national approach to EMR adoption and use, there has never been a greater need for leadership to ensure that sustainable and effective strategies be put in place. However, does the makeup of Canada work against any efforts to create sustainable policies? Having been involved in numerous provincial and national programs over the past decade, it has been evident to me that any attempts to reach consensus have been fraught with difficulties. Quebec is frequently not at the table in a meaningful way and has the added challenges of the need for French or bilingual EMR solutions. Privacy, instead of functioning as an enabler to develop systems that protect confidential information while allowing the movement of appropriate data between patient and provider, functions as a barrier. [Privacy experts will take exception to this statement - however I witnessed first-hand the inability to share information between regional health authorities in British Columbia without complex information sharing agreements. These entities are theoretically all on the same side]. Australia has taken the novel approach of shifting towards a patient health record (PHR) approach to their national electronic health records strategy. After years of attempting to develop meaningful national policies, they have moved away from the top-down towards the bottom-up approach. Is it simply the desire in Canada for everyone to be heard or is it the more ominous need for control at the provincial or regional levels that acts as the primary barrier? As the US puts significant resources behind a committed strategy to enable EMR adoption at the provider level [not without its own challenges], Canada seems frozen and unable to move ahead. Perhaps what we need is a health czar such as Dr. David Blumenthal in the US! What we also need is a recognition that the needs from province to province are not significantly different from an information sharing perspective that we need entirely different versions of EMRs in each province. Canada is being left behind by the US and is way behind many European countries in terms of the automation of healthcare. If we truly consider ourselves a first-world country, we need to move away from third-world strategies and put effective leadership in charge of the national EMR strategy. Without this, we will never create clinically seductive solutions and Canadian physicians and patients will remain mired in the disorganized world of the hybrid paper and electronic healthcare system. Alan Brookstone Canadian EMR 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Can we Achieve Healthcare System Sustainability with Fixed Budgets and Insatiable Demands? December 2, 2009 By Alan Brookstone Categories: General eHealth Get used to doing more for less! One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see that healthcare system sustainability is going to be a huge challenge for nations in the years to come. Already, demand outstrips supply in many developed countries. Approximately 50 million people do not have health insurance coverage in the US and 5 million Canadians cannot find a family doctor. These are not uncommon examples internationally of healthcare systems under pressure. Not only are these situations reflective of concomitant personal tragedy, but they also reflect the fact that unless countries get healthcare costs under control, this problem has the potential to sink the economies of great nations. We hear terms such as 'healthcare reform', shared services strategies, automation of paper processes, but what does it mean to patients and to those providers in the trenches who are tasked with delivering the care? To name a few of the driving forces, we have:
We exist in a world of increased expectations and fixed buckets of funding. In this situation, there are few alternatives. In addition to doing more for less, we have to improve efficiency and decrease waste. Some of these strategies need to focus on reducing duplication, reducing costly errors and reducing inappropriate investigations. In addition, becoming more targeted with how care is provided - something that is impossible in the dominantly paper world in which we function. No matter how you slice and dice the problem - the automation of healthcare is one of the solutions. So get ready for more talk and action relating to EMRs, EHRs, PHRs, Patient portals and Mobile Health. We do not have many viable alternatives! 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email Google Health Study - Nov 2009. How do Physicians use the Internet? November 19, 2009 By Alan Brookstone Categories: General eHealth One feature of Twitter that I find particularly useful is the ability to identify lists of individuals with similar interests and review information that they have identified. It is like having an army of researchers at one's fingertips. This particular study, conducted by Google Health in August 2009 and just published, analyzed how US physicians are using the Internet. 411 physicians (GPs / Endochrinologists / Cardiology / Psychiatry) were surveyed over a three week period. Conclusions were very interesting:
Click here to read the Google Study (Formatting for this web page takes a bit of work to navigate) 0 Comment(s) · del.icio.us · Digg it · Furl · reddit · Email |
