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The latest report in KLAS says, that, BI or The enterprise business intelligence solutions positioned at hospitals are more inclined to evolve from general software companies like SAP and IBM

The newest KLAS report , ‘Enterprise Business Intelligence’ is about opinions of approximately 180 healthcare provider executives to determine the market for enterprise BI solutions, that binds financial and clinical data analytics to assist providers analyze recent developments and make subjective decisions.The report stands witness to the popularity of industry-agnostic vendors, largely shadowing the interest in solutions from Cerner, Eclipsys, Epic, GE and Siemens.

Even if the concern BI adoption is still comparitively unspoken of, in the healthcare industry, Dimensional Insight, IBM, Information Builders and SAP had adequate and authenticated deployments to be ranked in the KLAS report. Basically, the providers appreciated the sellers for rendering strong and well-balenced devices that offered a whole new range of information options and their customers generally represent the deepest adopters of business intelligence. However, expanded balence may also result in complications.

Dimensional Insight was first on the enterprises list in the report. Information Builders and McKesson came after. The others include Cerner, IBM, Lawson, Microsoft, Oracle, Precision.BI, SAP, SAS and Siemens. McKesson, among principal hospital vendors, was ranked in the KLAS report with its Horizon Business Insight product.Cerner offered its BI capabilities ahead of clinical analytics and into the financial realm, with limited access. The KLAS report also mentions about the part where providers hope BI to consider meaningful use. Many observers are of the impression,that, BI solutions will be pivotal in meaningful use.

“Providers have indicated that many of the industry-agnostic vendor solutions are so highly configurable and complex that organizations without a sizable IT department find the systems unwieldy and sometimes beyond their capacity,” said Lorin Bird, KLAS research director and author of the new report. “For instance, IBM clients who used consultants to implement Cognos scored the solution roughly 10 points higher than those who did it themselves.”  As one provider said, “BI will play a critical role. Never before have we been so carefully scrutinized, and the BI system helps us provide the information and reports needed to be successful.”

Computed Tomography (CT) dose is on ECRI Institute’s 2010 list of top 10 technology hazards. Recommendations for regulating CT radiation dose is thus, expanded by the Institute.

High CT radiation doses are being delivered to patients on a daily basis, putting them at an increased risk of developing cancer. Hence, keeping CT radiation dose in check is a high priority safety concern for hospitals. While increased levels of radiations may put patients at risk, diminishing the same, will affect the image quality that may result in incomplete examination or rescanning of the image. The process will expose the patients to even more radiation.

Practical esteem to balance between the degree of radiation are presented in a new guidance article, “CT Radiation Dose: Understanding and Controlling the Risks,” released by ECRI Institute, an independent, nonprofit organization that researches the best modes of care. This comprehensive Health Devices article expands on the recommendations about controlling CT radiation dose published in ECRI Institute’s 2010 Top 10 Technology Hazards list.

ECRI Institute emphasizes that the responsibility also lies with the facility itself, referring physicians, medical physicists, radiation technologists, and CT device manufacturers. The article includes sixteen practical recommendations that every facility should identify with, to help control radiation dose in CT.

The recommendations are set in 5 major sections:

1. protocol optimization,
2. prioritizing dose reduction,
3. patient selection,
4. the technician’s responsibilities,
5. quality assurance.

Dr.Keller, vice president, health technology evaluation and safety, ECRI Institute, considers the latest CT models are created with dose-saving technologies, but they may not be very affordable for many organizations. “In time, these technologies will become more widely installed,” says Keller. “Until then, there are a number of effective strategies every facility can implement to reduce dosage.The article also includes a dedicated section on dose-reduction technologies and the amount of dose savings they each achieve.

Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, recently announced that ONC has awarded $60 million in research grants through the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program to four renowned institutions.

The research grants worth $60 million were awarded to Mayo Clinic of Medicine, Harvard University, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,  and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  through the SHARP program.

Dr. David Blumenthal said , “The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has created a solid foundation of programs and initiatives to support health care practitioners and hospitals in implementing meaningful use of certified EHR technology, but we are admittedly at the beginning of our journey. ONC is keenly aware that technology needs to continuously advance, bringing new solutions that will make it even more beneficial. While I’m proud of what ONC has achieved so far, I’m humbled by the size of the task still in front of us.”

The research projects in these institutions will be set to identify solutions – long-term as well as short-term – to address the fundamental challenges which include -

Researchers, the technology industry, and health care providers will be leading the multidisciplinary teams, and these teams are supposed to conduct these projects. The results of the team work will be practiced by producing innovative health IT solutions, so they can be deployed nationwide.

Amidst the debates and campaigns by the Obama administration to gain support to move forward advancing the healthcare reform bill, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has announced an additional amount of 162 million dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for advancement of health information technology (HIT).

The additional funding is to award the states for meaningful use of of HIT and adoption of electronic health records and health information exchange (HIE) . It  will be given to the following 16 states and state designated entities for adoption of HIE according to the national standards:

• Agency of Health Care Administration (FL)
• The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
• New Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority
• South Carolina Department of Health & Human Services
• Iowa Department of Public Health
• Idaho Health Data Exchange
• State of North Dakota, Information Technology Department
• State of Alaska
• Nebraska Department of Administrative Services
• South Dakota Department of Health
• Department of Public Health, State of CT
• State of Mississippi
• Indiana Health Information Technology, Inc.
• HealthShare Montana
• Texas Health and Human Services Commission
• Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum

Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology stated that the grant has now empowered the state to develop innovative ways to overcome the barriers preventing health information exchange.

“States play a critical leadership role in advancing the development of the exchange capacity of healthcare providers and hospitals within their states and across the nation. Health information exchange will enable eligible healthcare providers to be deemed meaningful users of health IT and receive incentive payments under the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive program,”he added.

The funding is part of the 2 billlion effort by the government to achieve meaningful use of HIT and make available the use of electronic health record by each person by 2014.

According to Rainu Kaushal and colleagues from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, electronic prescriptions can reduce prescribing errors up to seven-fold. The study, about the benefits of e-prescribing in primary healthcare setting, is published online in the Journal Of General Internal Medicine.

The authors also found that prescribing errors may occur much more frequently in community-based healthcare practices than previously thought.

“At a time when the federal government and many state governments, led by New York state, are pushing for increased use of information technology to improve the delivery of health care, it is important that physicians are aware of how technology like electronic prescribing systems can improve the safety and value of care they give patients,” Rainu Kaushal said.

The authors compared the medication prescribing errors between 15 physicians who adopted e-prescribing and 15 who sticked to the traditional paper-based prescribing, in ambulatory community based practices in the Hudson Valley region of New York, from September 2005 and June 2007.

E-prescribing was done using a commercial, stamd-alone system with clinical decision support system such as dosing recommendations and checks for drug allergies, drug interactions and duplicate treatment therapies.

The primary outcome of the study was prescribing errors. The authors found that there is a seven fold decrease in errors (from 42.5 percent to 6.6 percent during a year) with use of e-prescribing while the error percentage remained high with paper prescriptions (37.3 percent to 38.4 percent at one year).

“Ambulatory prescribing errors rates might be much higher than previously reported,” the study authors conclude. “This is one of the first studies to show that a commercially available, stand-alone eprescribing system is effective in primary care practices, demonstrating a nearly seven-fold decrease in errors.”

The NHS Database in England might be pulling in information from patient’s confidential medical records without consent, doctors have warned.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said it has “serious concerns” that patient medical records are being uploaded too quickly to a national database.

The system will eventually link more than 30,000 GPs to nearly 300 hospitals through an online appointments system (Choose and Book), a centralised medical records system for 50 million patients, e-prescriptions and faster computer network links.The centralised medical records system, Summary Care Record (SCR), will include dats on the patient’s allergies, medication and adverse reactions, and more with time.

Amidst criticism that the NHS IT upgrade is taking time, the department of health announced in december that they would accelerate the development of the medical records system will be accelerated.

The process will pull the required information from the patient’s medical records to the NHS, the patient will be notified during the process and then they can opt out if they want.

The British Medical Association fears that when the speed with which the programme is being implemented is raising concern.

Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA, said “Patients’ right to opt out is crucial, and it is extremely alarming that records are apparently being created without them being aware of it.”

The latest market research report by Global Industry Analysts (GIA) on Electronic Medical Records (EMR) states that there is an excellent potential for EMR systems in the healthcare industry worldwide. This is due to widespread adoption of electonic systems for effective management of data, less costs, minimum staff and improving the quality of care.

The report titled ‘Electronic Medical Record Systems: A North American and European Market Report,’ provides a comprehensive analysis of European and North American markets for EMRs, including company profiles, product reviews/introductions/innovations, key players and present industry analysis.  According to the report, the European and North American markets are exceed US$5.4 billion and US$1.4 billion, respectively by 2015.

The GIA profiles companies like Agfa-Gevaert Ltd, Ascribe plc, Cambio Healthcare Systems, Cerner Corporation, CompuGROUP HOLDING AG, Computer Programs and Systems, Inc, EBIT AET S.p.A., Eclipsys Corporation, Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Epic Systems Corporation, GE Healthcare, Hewlett Packard Company, IBA Health (Europe) Ltd, IMS MAXIMS plc, Indra Sistemas SA, iSoft Group plc, McKesson Corporation, MDS Medical Software, MedPlus, Inc, Medical Information Technology, Inc, Medasys SA, Nexus AG, Noemalife SpA, Profdoc AB, QuadraMed Corporation, SAP (UK) Limited, Siemens Medical Solutions GSD GmbH, System C Healthcare plc etc as key players in the electronic medical records industry.

You can register for the ‘Second Annual Multi-State Health IT Collaborative for E-Health Conference‘ to be held on february 8 & 9, 2010 at the Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel, Washington, DC, to discuss about the efforts and best practices in implementation and adoption of Electronic medical Records and healthcare IT.  There will be participation from various organisations involed in the development of the health IT policy like CMS, Office of the National Co-ordinator for Health IT, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) etc.

The office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has announced that they are turning transparent to the public and from january 2010, all the delibrations of the Health IT Policy Commitee Work Groups will be available to the common mass through webcasts. You can visit healthit.hhs.gov for details.

There are six work groups or subcommittees for the HIT policy commitee (meaningful use, Certification/Adoption, Information Exchange, Nationwide Health Information Network, Strategic Planning, Privacy and Security Policy) which meet periodically and provide recommendations to the committee regarding various aspects of development of healthcare informatics network.