by medicaltechont | Jun 9, 2018 | Canada, Cloud, e-Health, eHealth, Election, Electronic Medical Records, Healthcare, Hospitals, Medical Records, Technology
I have been a family physician practising in this province for 30 years. It is a great joy looking after my patients. However, looking after them in the health care quagmire of disconnected information and bureaucratic silos is becoming a nightmare. It is alarming seeing my young colleagues bewildered so early in their careers, and new graduates of family medicine are afraid to set up practice.
The province is carved up into 14 Local Health Integration Networks and 76 sub-LHINs each seemingly reinventing the wheel while consultants analyze the same things over and over again. There is an obsession with accountability frameworks designed by this ever growing bureaucracy that has little idea about what we actually do and what tools we need to do our job.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on a huge array of electronic repositories and information systems that don’t integrate at the most basic level with each other years after they were built. Providers spend countless hours trying to locate who does what where and what hoops to jump through to get appointments. We fax long paper forms with lab and other reports that are somehow not available from these expensive repositories. We typically access each other by phone in the absence of electronic messaging capabilities.
Read more at https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8651966-survival-at-the-front-lines-of-the-health-care-quagmire/
by medicaltechont | Jan 27, 2018 | Apple, e-Health, eHealth, EHR, Electronic Medical Records, Medical Records, Technology
Apple has announced a solution to bring health records to the iPhone, aiming to make things easier for users to access their medical information.
Right now, accessing your health data can be a real hassle and it may not always be easy to find a lab test or some other such record. With this in mind, Apple wants to make medical records easily accessible on the go, on iPhones.
Apple Bringing Medical Records To iPhones
Patients would previously have their medical records in multiple locations, which often required them to piece all information together, from each health care provider, manually. Together with the healthcare community, Apple created Health Records based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR for short, which is a standard designed for the transfer of digital records.
Read more at http://www.techtimes.com/articles/219755/20180127/apple-is-bringing-digital-health-records-to-the-iphone.htm
by medicaltechont | Jul 30, 2017 | Electronic Medical Records, emr, Medical Records, Ontario
Electronic patient records in doctors’ offices across the country are being used by brand name drug companies looking to muscle market share away from generic competitors, a Star investigation has found.
Concerned physicians say a clinical tool they use to write prescriptions and care for patients is being co-opted, and they fear health records are being tapped so drug companies can increase profits.
In the battle for pharmaceutical dominance, this new tactic, deployed in software used by doctors, has allowed brand-name companies to capitalize on the moment a prescription is written.
Here’s how it works:
The patient records are found in EMRs, or electronic medical record software, owned by Telus Health, a subsidiary of the telecom giant. The software is used by thousands of Canadian doctors to take notes during patient visits and to create a prescription to be filled by the patient’s pharmacy.
Read more at https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/07/29/doctors-use-this-software-during-patient-visits-now-big-pharma-is-tapping-it-to-sell-their-drugs.html
by medicaltechont | Mar 6, 2017 | hackers, Healthcare, Hospitals, Medical Records, Security
HACKED MEDICAL DEVICES make for scary headlines. Dick Cheney ordered changes to his pacemaker to better protect it from hackers. Johnson & Johnson warned customers about a security bug in one of its insulin pumps last fall. And St. Jude has spent months dealing with the fallout of vulnerabilities in some of the company’s defibrillators, pacemakers, and other medical electronics. You’d think by now medical device companies would have learned something about security reform. Experts warn they haven’t.
Read more at https://www.wired.com/2017/03/medical-devices-next-security-nightmare/
by medicaltechont | Apr 30, 2016 | Medical Records, Security, Technology
As was summarized in this publication’s introduction to the first article in this two-part series on the ransomware crisis, published on April 18, ransomware has blossomed into a crisis-level phenomenon recently in U.S. healthcare. The first nationally reported mainstream media news story in this drama was that around Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. On Friday, February 12, NBC4News, the local affiliate of the NBC network in Los Angeles, reported in its noon and evening broadcasts, and then online, this story: “Hollywood Hospital ‘Victim of Cyber Attack.’” And since that moment, ransomware attacks have rarely been out of the mainstream media headlines, with revelations of attacks that have brought down electronic health record (EHR) and other clinical and operational information systems at the 10-hospital Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health (first media report March 28), as well as at Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Ky. (first news report March 21), Alvarado Hospital Medical Center in San Diego, and Chino (Calif.) Valley Medical Center and Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, Calif. (news stories on March 31), and Kings Daughters Health in Marion, Ind. (first news report Apr. 1).
Read more at http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/facing-ransomware-crisis-what-healthcare-it-leaders-need-do-right-now
by medicaltechont | Apr 23, 2016 | Canada, Electronic Medical Records, Healthcare, Hospitals, Medical Records, Ontario, Security, Software
Important Notice:
As we have previously indicated, on March 30, 2016, the Grandview Medical Centre experienced a computer malfunction. As a result, and despite our extensive recovery efforts, some data entered into our electronic medical records has been lost.
Please rest assured that there has been no unauthorized access to your personal health information as a result of this incident.
We are currently in the process of determining the extent of the data loss as well as which patients have been affected by this unfortunate event. We will be notifying affected patients as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for this occurrence and appreciate your patience as we identify the full extent of the loss and those affected patients.
Read more at https://www.facebook.com/gmcfht/
