White House calls for new health IT task force (23 February 2010 - Healthcare IT News)
Canada - No More Dithering On e-Health (2 March 2010 - Medical News Today)
Canada is lagging behind many countries in the use of electronic health records and it is critical that the country's medical and political leaders set targets for universal adoption, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). While Canada has invested more than $1.6 billion in federal funds to develop integrated electronic health records, only 37% of general practitioners use electronic records compared with 97% in New Zealand and 95% in Australia.
Europe - COCIR Publishes Telehealth Toolkit (19 February 2010 - eHealth Europe)
European health IT trade body COCIR has launched a telemedicine toolkit to support the creation of a stronger European telemedicine sector. The five recommendations in the position paper include that the EC and member states need to establish an appropriate legal framework with effective transposition at country level, cooperation needs to be strengthened between healthcare stakeholders to "best practice health strategies," and there needs to be greater finance for large scale projects with health economic evaluation.
Germany - First European deal for HealthVault (28 January 2010 - eHealth Insider)
Haiti - Communicating During Emergencies (15 February 2010 - Federal Telemedicine News)
Scientific Articles
E-health is booming in developing world (22 February 2010 - BMJ)
The use of electronic information and communications technologies in health is rising rapidly in the developing world, offering the potential to bring a revolution in health care. This message to delegates at a forum in Washington, DC, on 16 February was also the focus of the February issue of the health policy journal Health Affairs. Delegates were told of a programme in South Africa that uses mobile phones to support adherence to antiretroviral treatment. In Peru, where 80% of people have their own mobile phone, a provider has created a realtime system to monitor adverse events. Mexico is using mobile phones for CardioNET, a programme of text messages promoting exercise and physical activity. Meanwhile several nations in Africa and South America are implementing the open medical record system (OpenMRS), delegates heard.
Studies
Electronic Prescriptions Reduce Errors By Seven-Fold (28 February 2010 - Medical News Today)
Should doctors around the country use e-prescribing to decrease prescription errors? A study led by physician-scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College found that health care providers using an electronic system to write prescriptions were seven times less likely to make errors than those writing their prescriptions by hand. The study appears today in the online edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Articles:
How to stop women dying - hand out some mobile phones? (3 March 2010 - The Guardian)
I made a plea for action rather than words on maternal mortality the other day. Sometimes one wonders whether all the good intentions, hot air and large sums of cash spent on talking about important issues like women dying in childbirth might not be better invested in some practical help on the ground - such as mobile phones for traditional birth attendants in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa, so they can call for help when a woman is in danger of bleeding to death. So I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International, who in spite of the name, have gone way beyond the hot air stage. In Pakistan and now in parts of the Gambia they have done what most needs to be done to stop women dying - they have put in place practical measures to get women emergency obstetric care. And that includes mobile phones for TBAs.
Internet-based medical education: a realist review of what works, for whom and in what circumstances (2 February 2010 - BMC Medical Education)
International benchmarking of healthcare quality (3 March 2010 - Rand Corporation)
There is growing interest in the systematic assessment and international benchmarking of quality of care provided in different healthcare systems, and major work is under way to support this process through the development and validation of quality indicators that can be used internationally. Recognising that cross-national data comparison remains a challenge, there is now a considerable body of data that allow for comparisons of healthcare quality in selected areas of care. The report includes a description of existing indicators that could be used to compare healthcare quality in different countries, along with a discussion of specific problems in making comparisons at this level of detail. This is illustrated with case studies of two measures widely used for international comparisons: avoidable mortality and cancer survival. These show both the potential power of cross-national comparisons and some of the difficulties in drawing valid interpretations from the data.
Grants
Rockefeller Foundation Supports Expansion, Training of E-Health Work Force in Developing World (19 February 2010 - AMIA)
The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a $630,100 project support grant to the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) to support the initial implementation this year of a global e-Health training program in sub-Saharan Africa designed for primary care providers, technical staff and health policy-makers. The Rockefeller grant will support Health Informatics Building Blocks (HIBBs), a program developed by AMIA in which distance-learning supports clinical and health informatics training in low-resource countries where greater understanding and use of informatics and databases can enable better support of community care and public health services. This education initiative will provide an infrastructure that enables a broad audience such as community health workers in developing countries to acquire skills and knowledge in informatics at little or no cost to indigenous institutions or individuals.
Grants to Advance IT & Training (15 February 2010 - Federal Telemedicine News)
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced nearly $1 billion in Recovery Act awards are available to help healthcare providers adopt health IT and to help the Department of Labor train healthcare workers for future jobs. The awards will make health IT available to over 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by 2014. Dr. David Blumenthal National Coordinator for HIT reports of the $750 million available in HHS grants, $386 million will go to 40 states and qualified State-Designated Entities. The goal is to rapidly build the capacity needed to exchange health information through the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program. The funds will be used to help the states implement plans for statewide HIEs by providing for governance, policies, and the technical services needed to support HIEs. The awards will be used to encourage the states to participate in the Nationwide Health Information Network.
More details at eHealth Intelligence Report
Canada - No More Dithering On e-Health (2 March 2010 - Medical News Today)
Canada is lagging behind many countries in the use of electronic health records and it is critical that the country's medical and political leaders set targets for universal adoption, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). While Canada has invested more than $1.6 billion in federal funds to develop integrated electronic health records, only 37% of general practitioners use electronic records compared with 97% in New Zealand and 95% in Australia.
Europe - COCIR Publishes Telehealth Toolkit (19 February 2010 - eHealth Europe)
European health IT trade body COCIR has launched a telemedicine toolkit to support the creation of a stronger European telemedicine sector. The five recommendations in the position paper include that the EC and member states need to establish an appropriate legal framework with effective transposition at country level, cooperation needs to be strengthened between healthcare stakeholders to "best practice health strategies," and there needs to be greater finance for large scale projects with health economic evaluation.
Germany - First European deal for HealthVault (28 January 2010 - eHealth Insider)
Haiti - Communicating During Emergencies (15 February 2010 - Federal Telemedicine News)
Scientific Articles
E-health is booming in developing world (22 February 2010 - BMJ)
The use of electronic information and communications technologies in health is rising rapidly in the developing world, offering the potential to bring a revolution in health care. This message to delegates at a forum in Washington, DC, on 16 February was also the focus of the February issue of the health policy journal Health Affairs. Delegates were told of a programme in South Africa that uses mobile phones to support adherence to antiretroviral treatment. In Peru, where 80% of people have their own mobile phone, a provider has created a realtime system to monitor adverse events. Mexico is using mobile phones for CardioNET, a programme of text messages promoting exercise and physical activity. Meanwhile several nations in Africa and South America are implementing the open medical record system (OpenMRS), delegates heard.
Studies
Electronic Prescriptions Reduce Errors By Seven-Fold (28 February 2010 - Medical News Today)
Should doctors around the country use e-prescribing to decrease prescription errors? A study led by physician-scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College found that health care providers using an electronic system to write prescriptions were seven times less likely to make errors than those writing their prescriptions by hand. The study appears today in the online edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Articles:
How to stop women dying - hand out some mobile phones? (3 March 2010 - The Guardian)
I made a plea for action rather than words on maternal mortality the other day. Sometimes one wonders whether all the good intentions, hot air and large sums of cash spent on talking about important issues like women dying in childbirth might not be better invested in some practical help on the ground - such as mobile phones for traditional birth attendants in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa, so they can call for help when a woman is in danger of bleeding to death. So I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International, who in spite of the name, have gone way beyond the hot air stage. In Pakistan and now in parts of the Gambia they have done what most needs to be done to stop women dying - they have put in place practical measures to get women emergency obstetric care. And that includes mobile phones for TBAs.
Internet-based medical education: a realist review of what works, for whom and in what circumstances (2 February 2010 - BMC Medical Education)
International benchmarking of healthcare quality (3 March 2010 - Rand Corporation)
There is growing interest in the systematic assessment and international benchmarking of quality of care provided in different healthcare systems, and major work is under way to support this process through the development and validation of quality indicators that can be used internationally. Recognising that cross-national data comparison remains a challenge, there is now a considerable body of data that allow for comparisons of healthcare quality in selected areas of care. The report includes a description of existing indicators that could be used to compare healthcare quality in different countries, along with a discussion of specific problems in making comparisons at this level of detail. This is illustrated with case studies of two measures widely used for international comparisons: avoidable mortality and cancer survival. These show both the potential power of cross-national comparisons and some of the difficulties in drawing valid interpretations from the data.
Grants
Rockefeller Foundation Supports Expansion, Training of E-Health Work Force in Developing World (19 February 2010 - AMIA)
The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a $630,100 project support grant to the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) to support the initial implementation this year of a global e-Health training program in sub-Saharan Africa designed for primary care providers, technical staff and health policy-makers. The Rockefeller grant will support Health Informatics Building Blocks (HIBBs), a program developed by AMIA in which distance-learning supports clinical and health informatics training in low-resource countries where greater understanding and use of informatics and databases can enable better support of community care and public health services. This education initiative will provide an infrastructure that enables a broad audience such as community health workers in developing countries to acquire skills and knowledge in informatics at little or no cost to indigenous institutions or individuals.
Grants to Advance IT & Training (15 February 2010 - Federal Telemedicine News)
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced nearly $1 billion in Recovery Act awards are available to help healthcare providers adopt health IT and to help the Department of Labor train healthcare workers for future jobs. The awards will make health IT available to over 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by 2014. Dr. David Blumenthal National Coordinator for HIT reports of the $750 million available in HHS grants, $386 million will go to 40 states and qualified State-Designated Entities. The goal is to rapidly build the capacity needed to exchange health information through the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program. The funds will be used to help the states implement plans for statewide HIEs by providing for governance, policies, and the technical services needed to support HIEs. The awards will be used to encourage the states to participate in the Nationwide Health Information Network.
More details at eHealth Intelligence Report
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