Healthcare ITO Innovations

Google Voice in Healthcare I applied and received my invitation for a Google Voice phone number. I setup my cell phone and home phone to centralize my voicemail and call volume through Google Voice. At first, I wasn’t completely sure how to use this service, but as receive more transcribed voice mails in my e-mail box and text message, I can’t imagine life without this service. Of course my first though was how can we use this service to enhance healthcare delivery? As Google again disrupts AT&T and Apple’s delivery model the FCC continues to probe into the legality of this service, new and innovative healthcare solutions can spin off from these types of technologies. Where do you see Google Voice impacting healthcare?

PHI Security – Is your E-mail System Secure? Recently in the HIMSS magazine Healthcare IT News reported over 600 patients at the University of California, San Francisco had to be notified of a possible data breach that occurred when a hacker obtained e-mails containing their personal information. Each of our clients sites have e-mail systems of various versions and configuration. We have all seen the fake requests to update our financial information from banks and credit unions, this attack is especially concerning when it appeared to come from your own company. The breach was created when a faculty physician in the School of Medicine fell prey to a phishing scam. The physician unknowingly provided the user name and password for his/her e-mail account in response to an e-mail message that appeared to come from the university's internal computer servers. These types of attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to defend against. Educating our hospital and IT staff can help, p

Proper Enterprise Administration in Healthcare IT A critical part of IT services is the proactive monitoring and administration of all hospital infrastructure and application technology. This includes network devices, servers, storage, network circuits, interfaces and in some cases applications and job/batch processes. When systems experience failures, it is critical that monitoring agents quickly trap the event and escalate based on established rules in the monitoring application. It’s important these rules are properly defined and configured for the hospital environment being services. Systems and devices attached to the hospital network should be properly identified and monitored based on criticality to the delivery of patient care and stable hospital operations. This includes the following: Hardware Monitoring – IBM Director, HP Insight Manager type functionality that reports the status of hardware componets such as power supplies, fans, adapters and disk to ensure all fault t

I am very thankful to work with very dedicated and innovative IT professionals, at our customer sites and throughout IT, for whom healthcare IT is as much a mission as it is a profession. Exploring innovations in healthcare technology is the primary theme of this newsletter, I have started a list of things that I’m thankful for within healthcare IT. Starting with the first five, this list includes technologies, standards and services that have made work more interesting, exciting and filled with new possibilities. 1. I'm thankful for my iPad. What a great platform (and yes I dropped it once and it survived). I’m thankful for innovation and to work in a culture that promotes experimentation, testing and looking for ways to improve existing services and find new markets. Encouraging and celebrating new ideas and promoting a structure that can bring ideas to life, which can be a major differentiator. 2. I’m thankful for advancements in networking and bandwidth. Increased spee

GE Developing Body Sensor Networks Body Sensor Networks (BSN) are the latest initiative from GE to enable the wireless monitoring of non-invasive and body worn devices that collect patient specific information, including temperature, pulse-oximetry, blood glucose levels, electrocardiogram readings, blood pressure and respiratory functions. As we deploy wireless networks across our respective client sites, our designs must consider the future requirements for these types of technologies both internal and external to the healthcare provider site. GE has been participating in the IEEE 802.15 task group to develop a standard for body area networks and the FCC to create a dedicated band of spectrum for body sensor networks and the FCC has issued a notice of proposed rule making in favor of the idea. So progress is being made with this technology. A recent survey reported that at least 40% of patient care time in a conventional hospital setting is spent manually recording patient moni

Intelligent use of Social Network in Healthcare From Surgeons tweeting during surgery to Hospital Facebook pages, Healthcare provider are figuring out how to best use social networks to communicate better with patients and staff. Healthcare providers, especially their HR and marketing organizations are discovering how to utilize social networks in day-to-day operations. More and more business (employees, leads, market intelligence) will come directly through business applications that tap into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks that are already being used by employees and customers outside the workplace. Some Healthcare providers subscribe to Twitter, sending health and wellness information to there followers. As the internet becomes even more accessible via SmartPhones and PDA’s, the ability to reach a wide demographic has increased dramatically. Security, HIPAA compliance, network infrastructure, just a few areas where IT needs to understand the impact of t

Deploying Open-Source solutions It’s IT's mission to bring high quality, state of the art solutions to our clients, state of the art solutions can be expensive. Open Source solutions can provide the same quality applications; reduce cost while ensuring patient care and safety are maintained. Applications like VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) system, which is available from the Veterans Administration for a nominal fee have made a noticeable impact and won a number of accolades from the Institute of Medicine. The software is basically free (released as part of the Freedom of Information act), but the implementation is not free and a potential opportunity for IT. This is one innovative way to satisfy ARRA requirements while applying Stimulus money to other aspects of EMR adoption Other Open Source solutions are focused around productivity and collaboration applications. Replacements for expensive name brand products like Microsoft

8 Ways Cloud Computing will change Healthcare IT There is an interesting article on the ZDNet website by Dion Hinchcliffe, “Eight ways that cloud computing will change business.” Very interesting article, and is very relevant to our ITO and Healthcare IT business. In the spirit of the article, I have created “8 ways Cloud Computing will change Healthcare IT”. I’m sure there are more and here is a start: 1. New products and services – we have already discussed the impact of Cloud on the electronic medical records, healthcare providers utilize a variety of applications that could potentially be delivered via a Cloud. From Plant Operations management to Patient Accounting and clinical applications, Cloud has the potential to bring performance and scalability across the IT spectrum. 2. New lightweight outsourcing solutions – The Change management aspects of traditional outsourcing are one of many issues improved under a Cloud architecture. Healthcare has little tolerance for downtime

We all have personal health records, typically on paper and located at our Physician’s office or a hospital we may have visited. Like most healthcare consumers, we use what is made available by our healthcare provider or payer. While the number of patients using electronic PHR’s is small, the experiences patient’s and doctors had after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita certainly demonstrate the value of electronic records. Thousands of evacuees could not receive care because there records were destroyed or simply not available to the caregivers. There are several types of PHR’s available to the public, the most common are the public Cloud based PHR’s and there is no shortage of choices, with one search I found at least 50 sites offering PHR’s, from insurance, grocery stores and several private companies. Our healthcare providers have a lot at stake with the PHR, according to the meaningful use guidelines, those obtaining Stimulus (ARRA) funding for adoption of a certified EHR must pro