Cybercriminals Hold Australian Medical Clinic Electronic Patient Records Hostage

The danger of having an EPR that is not properly project. Read the news story on IEEE about cybercriminals that have hyjacked the electronic patient record of an Australian clinic. They broke into the computer system, encrypted all patient data on the system and are now asking for randsom money to decrypt the data again.

Go here for an ABC news TV item, click below to read the story on the IEEE Spectrum website.

Cybercriminals Hold Australian Medical Clinic Electronic Patient Records Hostage

Computer Magazine November 2012 - The move toward electronic health records

Check out Computer Magazine November 2012 for a whole series on the move toward electronic health records. Selected articles are also available Bericht publicerenfor free at the computer magazine website.

Next-gen PACS according to Eliot Siegel

Look at this Diagnostic Imaging interview with Eliot Siegel recorded at SIIM with his vision of the next generation PACS with, what he calls, clinical analytics. http://bcove.me/nfo2uwot

Study: Poor health IT implementation planning affects patient care

Every hospital is running IT implementation plans and has procedures and regulations to follow and obey to. In all cases it is advocated and believed that implementation of new IT systems such as Electronic Patient Records, and Radiology and Hospital Information Systems will have positive effects on the Healthcare institutions involved in increase of productivity and decrease of cost. However, planning is everything in projects like these as was shown by a paper in the American Journal of Managed Care.
A poorly planned health IT implementation can have deleterious effects on the quality of patient care, and can even increase inpatient mortality, according to an article published in the March edition of theAmerican Journal of Managed Care.
Study: Poor health IT implementation planning affects patient care

Three European Hospitals up to Stage 6 of the EMRAM scale

Besides the hospital in Hamburg, Germany that received Stage 7 on which I reported earlier on this blog, three other European hospitals have obtained Stage 6 on the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) scale.

Azienda ULSS 18 Rovigo (Local Healthcare Authority), Italy, Hospital Clinic I Provincial de Barcelona, Spain, and Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, Switzerland, have all achieved the accolade – the second highest rating on the scale.

More  info on Hospital IT Europe website.

New website launched: Doctors Helping Doctors Transform Healthcare

A new website has been launched called Doctors helping doctors transform healthcare. The authors of the website believe that health IT can and should be used to make care better, safer, and more value-laden. The website was started by a couple of pioneers on health IT and Meaningful use to help guide other doctors to find their way in the health IT jungle to put the health IT to the use for better healthcare.

Just launched, the site already contains a load of blog entries, movies, etc concerning topics like EHR Benefits, Meaningful Use, and Transforming Care.

RSNA: Putting patients in charge of image sharing makes for better care

A discussion I raised earlier on this Blog (here) is the fact that it would be well feasible to make patients responsible for their own data and remove the data sharing problem from the list of hospital IT. In the US, pilots are running to assess the possibilities of having the patient share his or her own data. One of the pilots is supported by the RSNA and mentioned here.

Check out the story on this topic on Health Imaging:
RSNA: Putting patients in charge of image sharing makes for better care

RSNA: Practical Informatics for the Practicing Radiologist

This session was organized in conjunction with the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM).

Keith Dreyer presented on meaningful use where the transition has to be made from a department centered EHr to a patient centered EHR with acces to any information of a patient from any location. Driving forces are consumerism with technology advances and the informed patients, but also economics where the demand is on decrease of healthcare costs. In radiology this means either reducing the cost of imaging or reducing the amount of imaging. A third driving force is quality (image intepretation and report, image access).

The thing that is wrong with a RIS is that it is departmental centric, the RIS should be fully integrated with the EHR. Interaction with requesting physicians and patients must be improved.

In PACS the trends are towards Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) with standards based archiving and cloud storage. Image display should move to storage independent web/mobile access. Image management should not focus on PACS or RIS based but patient centric.

New technologies that are playing a major role in future radiology informatics are:

• Cloud computing
• Mobile computing
• Healthcare innovations (clinical decision support, personal health records)