Category Archives: Uncategorized

PR: Medical Transcription Data Converted into Guerrilla Marketing Ammo

Medical transcription companies are benefiting from data collection, thanks to a free service from MedicalTranscription.com. The service uses MySQL, a popular free/open source database software. Transcription Report was recently released to subscribing companies listed on the website. The new quarterly report is a compilation of statistical data gathered from physicians and medical managers submitting match requests into the website.

Utilizing Transcription Match, medical managers and physicians submit their needs such as volume, specialty, preferred dictation and delivery methods and a host of other parameters. The online database then matches the needs of the medical practice to the abilities of the service and a report is delivered to the physician containing the contact information of those services matching the request.

Transcription Report is now available to the companies listed within the database and is an overview of the needs and trends of medical practices, without identifying the practice. “Looking into the data we have collected,” says John Nistad, CEO of MedicalTranscription.com, “We are able to better understand what the physician is looking for and where he wants to go in the future. For instance, we have learned that transcription services will need to have the ability to interface their final product into physician site medical management and electronic medical records systems. Sharing this information with our listed services only serves to improve the quality of service that is brought to market.”

Presented in a graphic format alongside analytic commentary, the report enables the transcription service owner to examine and compare their abilities with the needs of the market, and make adjustments where necessary. For example, more physicians are requesting 24 hour turnaround of their dictation than ever before.

The data analysis also influences the website content, and as a result, additional information about electronic medical records and application service providers has been brought to the site. “The goal of MedicalTranscription.com is to enable the medical transcription service owner to compete on a level plane with larger corporations now involved in medical transcription,” says Nistad. “Keeping current with emerging technology is a key to staying alive in this very competitive market.”

Transcription Report is a quarterly publication of MedicalTranscription.com and its distribution is limited to medical transcription services having an advertising subscription on MedicalTranscription.com. For more information:

MedicalTranscription.com Inc.
P.O. Box 6
Layton, NJ 07851
973-948-5151
www.MedicalTranscription.com

Robotic Pharmacists?

Interesting article on TechTV about Robotic Pharmacists: ‘ The next time you need a prescription filled, don’t be surprised if your pharmacist is a robot. Hundreds of hospitals and drugstores now rely on automated technology to count, bottle, and label prescription drugs just as people do — except the robots are almost always accurate, and they’re a lot faster…’

Call for exhibitors, eHealth 2003 Conference, May 22-23, 2003 Brussels

Yves Paindaveine on the openhealth-list writes: ‘Please note that the European Commission, DG Information Society, in collaboration with Directorate General Health and Consumer Protection and in collaboration with the Greek Presidency, is organising eHealth 2003 – High Level Ministerial conference and exhibition, 22-23
May, 2003, Brussels..’ The full announcement is within.

Dear Colleagues,

Please note that the European Commission, DG Information Society, in collaboration with Directorate General Health and Consumer Protection and in collaboration with the Greek Presidency, is organising eHealth 2003 – High Level Ministerial conference and exhibition, 22-23
May, 2003, Brussels

Those organisations that have implemented and use eHealth solutions in they daily work (for example Decision Support, Hospital Information Systems, Regional Health Information Networks, ePrescriptions, eBooking, telemedicine applications, education and training services, personal health systems, etc) are invited to apply for place at the exhibition and for the first eEurope Award at www.e-europeawards.com.

A panel of experts will select the best application for the exhibition based on the demonstrated contribution to quality, access and efficiency of healthcare including cost benefits. DEADLINE for applications 15 February, 2003

For further information please contact the Multilingual Helpdesk at the above website or by phone +31-43- 329-6-329 (English, French, German, Spanish and/or Dutch)

PS Link to the conference is also available at:

GnuMed Demo CD released

Finally, a demo CD for GnuMed has been released. A link for download can be found on OpenMed.
This CD is based on Knoppix, a well-received bootable Debian GNU/Linux CD. A recent CVS version
of GnuMed has been added to its collection of software (and some packages have been removed to
free up space for GnuMed). This CD will even start a GnuMed PostgreSQL database for your. Better
have plenty of RAM to play (it works on lower end hardware, though). Thanks go to Sebastian and Jubal (GnuMed), Andreas (Debian-Med) as well as Sebastian Zimmermann and
VT100 for hosting the image.

AMIA Announces Open Source ‘Exploratory Initiative’

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has announced five task forces, among them an ‘exploratory initiative’ for Open Source: ‘Open Source is currently an important topic throughout the computer software community and has implications for health care information systems. The purpose of this initiative is to explore the feasibility for AMIA to assume a leadership role in promoting and coordinating Open Source activities in the interests of health care system development. This exploratory effort will inventory the level of interest in Open Source initiatives among the health care information systems vendor community; will consider how those activities might interface with the broader Open Source community; and will assess needs and determine the feasibility of AMIA developing an organizational program designed to promote and coordinate Open Source activities in health care. The exploratory initiative will be conducted under the supervision of Dr. Hammond and Mr. Reynolds.’

UCLA CIO ‘Humbled’ By Open Source Quality

Mike McCoy, MD is Chief Information Officer of UCLA’s sprawling medical center and a champion of Free and Open Source medical software. His keynote speech at the recent OSHCA was remarkable. The following are excerpts from the speech. Errors in quoting him are mine, apologies in advance. �…I am humbled by the quality of open source software. [Medical software] Vendors have awful software behind the scenes because they don’t have a review process. Vendor companies frequently have 500 employees: 495 in sales, the rest in support…Most companies cannot afford to maintain quality sources themselves…�

“Vendor schemes are becoming more elaborate. It is hard to understand what to pay Microsoft, because their licenses have become so complicated…if vendors would focus on great service, they would make more money…Functionality of medical software is miserable…if only it was a matter of money and it isn’t. My budget is $60 million a year but there isn’t much I want to buy…”

“…I am humbled by the quality of open source software. [Medical Software] Vendors have awful software behind the scenes because they don’t have a review process. Vendor companies frequently have 500 employees: 495 in sales, the rest in support. Most companies cannot afford to maintain quality sources themselves…”

“I am concerned about the follow-the-herd ‘upgrading’ to Windows…Companies with good software on Unix migrate to Windows and the transformation is truly grotesque…IDX corp. has converted from Unix to Windows. It was in a nice little Unix box. Solid, reliable and inexpensive. We bought the Windows ‘upgrade’. It runs on a cluster of 20 NT servers with about the same level of service…”

“…Many CIO’s don’t have the nerve [to use open source medical software]. They don’t survive the consultantocracy. There is an incestuous relationship between consultants and commercial software vendors. Consultants love complex, long-term relationships…”

“Why should medical software cost millions of dollars to install?…There are longer term risks with closed source, like the sunsetting of products, and having no option other than to buy software that a bought-out vendor says you must buy. This isn’t apparent at first…Microsoft can now ‘dial a profit’ [with their new licensing scheme]…people are going to pay to keep Microsofts profits up. The entire University of California means nothing to Microsoft, we have no bargaining position…We hope to make UCLA independent of Microsoft so that we can make business decisions…Consultants never recommend open source solutions…Linux systems run for years non-stop on nice little boxes. I can’t imagine what a 1000 bed hospital would look like on Windows. Sometimes the CIO’s don’t know what OS their systems are running on…[Medical] open source developers should focus on little useful tools rather than boiling the ocean. You can be an open source advocate by using open source, not developing open source. Just use it…When UCLA is all open source, that is going to be a powerful message.”

UK leads in new open source health initiatives

UK health informatics experts are leading two new open source initiatives, the recently-approved Open Source Health Informatics Working Group (OSWG) of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and Open Nurse, the nursing open source network.

The IMIA Open Source Health Informatics Working Group is IMIA’s newest working group, and aims to bring together experts and interested individuals from a wide range of health professions, and with a range of interests in the potential application of open source solutions within their domains of expertise.

Open Nurse, the nursing open source network, is the first international initiative to explore the application of open source software in nursing and nursing informatics.

The IMIA OSWG will explore the implications of the open source approach for all aspects of health informatics and the appropriate use of open source solutions and applications. The OSWG will seek to work closely with other open source groups, to foster work and discussions.

The working Group is co-chaired by Professor Graham Wright, Director of CHIRAD, and chaired by Dr.Jan Vejvalka, of the Department of Applied Informatics, Charles University, Czech Republic.

Open Nurse will provide a collaborative forum within which to explore, promote and facilitate the use of open source software and approaches in nursing, healthcare and nursing informatics.

The development of Open Nurse is being lead by Dr Peter Murray.

Professor Graham Wright is Director of CHIRAD (Centre for Health Informatics Research and Development), which is the UK’s first virtual health informatics research centre and the UK’s first academic institutional member of IMIA.

Dr Peter Murray is a Founding Fellow of CHIRAD and the UK representative to IMIA.

Both Prof. Wright and Dr Murray are nurses and nurse educators with many years’ experience in their fields within the UK and internationally.

IMIA OSWG – www.chirad.info/imiaoswg

Open Nurse – www.open.nurse.info

IMIA – www.imia.org

CHIRAD – www.chirad.info

Contacts:
Graham Wright – graham.wright@chirad.info

Peter Murray – peter.murray@chirad.info

Netscape 7.0 Released

Last week Netscape
released version 7.0 of their browser. The browser
is heavily based upon the free/open source
Mozilla
browser. This is a significant event because it
proved against formidable odds that open source
software can deliver competitive products without
exorbitant, onerous and restrictive licensing
that can benefit a for-profit company. For medicine
it is a great asset because of its familiar name and
that the browsers functionality can be embedded
into medical software in ways the original
programmers may not have forseen. Unknown, is
whether it will be able to regain some of its
former market share.

Slashdot: Is Win2K + SP3 HIPPAA compliant?

Slashdot has a discussion up on the conundrum of software updating and HIPAA compliance: “…After reading the discussion on here about the new EULA for Win2k SP3, I had a disturbing thought. As far as I can tell, if you use Windows 2000 then you’re going to be out of compliance whatever you do. If you install the patch, then theoretically Microsoft could access those medical records (possibly by accident) without ‘due cause or need’ in the process of updating your machine. If you don’t patch your system then you’ll fail the security requirements of the law…”