A new study, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, suggests that follow-up calls to diabetes patients using interactive voice recognition technology could show promise in identifying safety triggers.
“Safety Events during an Automated Telephone Self-Management Support Intervention” was conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and appeared in...
After 25 years, virtual critical care is getting a closer look
The time is right for tele-ICU. The need for more intensive-care beds is acute. The cost of caring for critically ill patients has never been higher. Intensivists are in short supply, and only getting scarcer as the population gets older.
That was the case made in a Tuesday afternoon session at the American Telemedicine Association's...
Ironically, Andrew Watson's first telemedicine procedure was with a rural patient who was a Mennonite. At first, the patient and physician looked at each other warily.
"He didn't have a TV," said Watson, a colorectal surgeon and vice president at Pittsburgh-based UPMC, with a wry laugh. "And I'd never done this."
The procedure worked. And it was worth it. "He didn't drive," Watson said. "And I...
Jeffrey O. Henley, chairman of the Oracle Corporation, offered a technologist's perspective on the opportunities of reshaping healthcare in his Monday morning keynote at the American Telemedicine Association's 18th Annual International Meeting & Trade Show.
The mission, should we choose to accept it: "We've got to figure out how to do more for less."
Actually, with healthcare spending...
The American Telemedicine Association's 18th Annual International Meeting & Trade Show kicked off with a flourish on Sunday in Austin, Texas – a flourish of bagpipes.
ATA President Stewart Ferguson, chief information officer of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage, took the stage of the opening plenary decked out in a Scottish kilt and sporran.
It was his contribution,...
Improvements in the ability of medical devices and health IT systems to communicate and exchange data could lead to more than $30 billion a year in savings, according to a new report from the West Health Institute.
In recent testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Joseph M. Smith, MD, chief medical and science officer of the San Diego-based WHI, revealed these...
As health IT evolves and matures, its focus is shifting – if sometimes slowly – from checklists of technical specs to broader challenges related to technology design and usability.
At the Healthcare Experience Design (HxD) conference, sponsored by Portsmouth, N.H.-based experience design firm Mad*Pow and taking place March 24-26 in Boston, designers, technologists, product managers and...
Developers of what's being touted as the first FDA-approved autonomous navigation remote presence robot are ready to deploy it in hospitals throughout North America.
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration gave 510(k) clearance to the RP-VITA, developed jointly by iRobot Corp and InTouch Health.
The RP-VITA (Remote Presence Virtual Independent Telemedicine Assistant) combines...
New England Telehealth Consortium (NETC) has tapped Germantown, Md.-based Hughes Network Systems for a four-year contract to provide high-speed satellite services for mobile telehealth clinics throughout rural communities in Northern New England.
NETC is a federally funded consortium of healthcare providers - serving more than 400 sites in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont - whose mandate is...
Approximately 4,000 patients at the University of Michigan Health System have been notified that their personal health information has been compromised, UMHS officials have announced.
UMHS was notified on Nov. 20 by Mountain View, Calif.-based medication management vendor Omnicell that an unsecured electronic device containing patient health information was stolen from an Omnicell employee's car...
