Category Archives: Health-IT Successes

Alesha Adamson Accepts Misys Director of Open Source Solutions – Healthcare

From Tim Elwell of Misys: “I just wanted to go ‘on the record’ and thank this Community (and Fred Trotter in particular) for the pointer to a great OS find. Her name is Alesha Adamson and her first day with Misys was Aug. 4. We are still looking for some open source developers (see my previous posts) so if you know of anyone, please pass a pointer along to me at tim.elwell@misys.com. Here’s a blurb on Alesha who has GREAT HIE and healthcare credentials along with real healthcare OS experience in implementation. Please welcome Alesha Adamson to my team as director of Open Source Solutions – Healthcare. Alesha will be assisting me on strategy and roadmap development, creating a network to promote the exchange of health information across various communities, and further developing an open source community to support our HIE initiatives. Continue reading

Misys seeks new Director of Open Source Development — Healthcare

Recently, Histalk leaked that Ryan Bloom, has left his role as Director of Open Source Development — Healthcare. The post contemplates that Blooms departure might indicate that the Misys commitment to open source has waned. I got Tim Elwell’s permission to repost his thoughts from an email exchange between, him, me and Tim from Histalk. Elwell writes:

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StatWorks, Inc. Supports Industry Trials with OpenClinica Enterprise

CRO StatWorks implements OpenClinica to facilitate Electronic Data Capture (EDC) for industry-sponsored clinical trials.
StatWorks, Inc. Supports Industry Trials with OpenClinica Enterprise

(Research Triangle Park, NC) February 15th, 2008 StatWorks’, Inc., a contract research organization (CRO) specializing in statistical and data management services, announces it has selected OpenClinica Enterprise to facilitate Electronic Data Capture (EDC) for industry-sponsored clinical trials. StatWorks is one of the latest in a growing roster of CROs to rely on OpenClinica to power their clinical studies.

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RSI on Slashdot and Exercise Break

Slashdot has a story on Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) from computer keyboard use such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. This story brings back old hacker memories! Read on for a short trip down memory lane.

Exercise Break for Windows is a timer based exercise program to reduce stress and Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) that’s been around for a long time. You can get it cheaper here. It is a cool program, that won’t tax your system much at all.

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Study Supports Use of CPOE to Reduce Medication Errors

Critical Care Forum has “published”:http://ccforum.com/content/10/6/R21 a study on CPOE usage in an ICU entitled “Impact of computerized physician order entry on medication prescription errors in the intensive care unit: a controlled cross-sectional trial”
Medication errors in the intensive care unit (ICU) are frequent and lead to attributable patient morbidity and mortality, increased length of ICU stay and substantial extra costs. We investigated if the introduction of a computerized ICU system (Centricity Critical Care Clinisoft, GE Healthcare) reduced the incidence and severity of medication prescription errors (MPEs).

This is good news for any well designed, well implemented and properly used system.

Building Interoperability Into Medical Information

Science Daily has an article on the ARTEMIS EMR interoperability project: �The healthcare interoperability problem can be investigated in two categories: Interoperability of the healthcare messages exchanged and interoperability of electronic healthcare records [EHRs],� says Professor Asuman Dogac, Director of the Software Research & Development Center at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and coordinator of the IST-funded ARTEMIS project. Editor’s Note: Missing from the article is a discussion of Free and Open Source electronic medical record (EMR) software can help with interoperability.

Fighting Aids with PDAs

Wired has an article on the use of PDAs to battle HIV in the field. From the article: The technology is similar to “blending digital camera technology with the brains of a Palm Pilot,” says Dr. Bruce Walker, director of AIDS research at Harvard Medical School. Walker is part of a team of scientists at Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin who developed the sensor system. In tests, it has detected the amount of CD4 cells in the blood in as little as 10 minutes. The CD4 count indicates the stage of HIV in a patient, and helps doctors determine the best treatment and how much of it to administer.’

Fred Trotter
GPLMedicine.org insist on the GPL!

Medical Algorithms Project

Don’t know how I missed this one before. Here’s an interesting website www.medal.org which collects medical algorithms: ‘…
A Medical Algorithm is any computation, formula, survey, or look-up table, useful in healthcare. More than 7000 algorithms, organized into 45 chapters, are available as spreadsheets which can be opened in your browser (IE4.1+, Netscape 7.1+ )…In addition to the online spreadsheets 40 algorithms are now available online as web-based forms. Registered users have access to 249 such algorithms. Registration is free.

Developed by the Institute for Algorithmic Medicine , a non-profit Texas Corporation…’

Irish Hospital Struggles to Stay Open Source

This article discusses the struggle between the chief executive and the IT manager in an Irish hospital to stay open source instead of spending ‘e2 million’ on proprietary software: ‘…Mr Kenny claimed that the decision had the potential to commit the hospital to an investment of around e2 million and that nothing resembling a clear business case to justify the outlay had been produced.
Mr Kenny acknowledged that Beaumont Hospital was the only organisation in the health service that had adopted an �Open Source� strategy to date.
�Yet this has in no way disadvantaged us in fully participating in the interchange of data with other agencies,� he explained…’
Mr Kenny, the IT manager, appears to be making a courageous effort.