14th Computer-based Medical System Symposium

The Fourteenth IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS 2001) will be held July
26-27, 2001 at the Natcher Center on the Campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CBMS 2001 is
co-sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, and is now inviting the submission of technical research
papers from the NIH community. The conference Web site is here.
This symposium draws together experts in many fields to discuss the latest advances in medical systems based upon
computers.

PC Mag: Linksys Makes Wireless Affordable

PC Mag reviews LinkSys wireless Ethernet 802.11b standard adapter. What is noteworthy about it is the price: $130 for the wireless adapter and $250 for the access point. According to Bill Machrone, this is a steep decline from the days of $1000 access points and $500 adapters. What’s more, it can be used on either a laptop or a desktop. With costs declining so quickly, universal, affordable wireless data access in hospitals and clinics can’t be far off. At this price, technology like this in health care is likely to become as ubiquitous as telephones are now.

LMN Jobs/Classifieds/Career Section Opens!

Here’s my best go at a grandiose, ‘I am powerful’, hyped-up press release about something that’s good but not that big a deal: Houston, Texas: LinuxMedNews.com the leader in free and open source medical software news and resource information is proud to announce its latest contribution to the free and open source medical computing effort: LinuxMedNews Jobs/Classifieds/Career Development. This exciting new sub-site to the flagship LinuxMedNews.com can be found here and from the left of the LinuxMedNews home page by clicking the ‘Jobs/Classifieds’ link. Using the powerful Zope and Squishdot web publishing environments, readers can browse, search and post job listings, classified ads and career development information in easily searchable categories. Posts are viewable instantaneously. This classifieds section along with its Comprehensive Project List continues LinuxMedNews committment to help revolutionize medical education and practice through free and open source medical technologies.

Wired: Medical Privacy’s Tangled Web

Wired’s Donna Tappellini writes on some of the difficulties of HIPAA: ‘…When Congress mandated the standardization of all electronic health-care documents in
1996, it created the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It also opened
a Pandora’s box teeming with privacy and security issues.

HIPAA gave Congress three years to sort out the complex issues, and when it couldn�t
the mess was tossed into the lap of the Department of Health and Human Services. Last
month, HHS released its final list of standards and regulations on the privacy issues, with
security regulations expected this month…’

Wired: Tech Bucks in HIPAA Compliance

Wired writes: ‘…A treatise of federal rules intended to protect the privacy of health information could slam hospitals with
egregious compliance costs…The American Hospital Association estimates it will take a total of about $22.5 billion, so
companies who sell compliance solutions stand to do quite well for themselves. But the AHA says
hospitals should be cautious.

“We haven’t seen a killer app yet, and we are hoping hospitals will carefully examine the vendors
out there to find something that really meets their needs,” said Melinda Hatton, chief
Washington counsel for the AHA…’ With most health-care entities woefully behind in even basic clinical computing software, much less HIPAA compliance, I haven’t seen a killer app yet either, Melinda.

OIO-0.9.6 is BizTalk?

Open Infrastructure for Outcomes celebrates its (slightly delayed) scheduled release of version 0.9.6 today. OIO now supports fully portable patient records just like what Microsoft offers for business data through BizTalk. Patient records custom-created by any OIO server can now be exported as an XML file for viewing *and* charting in any other OIO server. Should Microsoft be worried?

OIO-0.9.6 release: (January 12, 2001)

  • New Features:
      Site Admin Tool

    1. Add-user admin tool for users with Manager role

      Patient Data Interchange

    2. forms-level Patient record export and import through XML
    3. validation of form used by Patient record during import through item-by-item comparison to existing forms
    4. import of the necessary form if the system does not have the form needed by a particular patient record being imported

      Online Data Analysis

    5. Not (1 or 2 or 3 …) added to AND(1 and 2 and 3 …) in drill down analysis.
    6. Or (1 or 2 or 3 …) added to AND(1 and 2 and 3 …) and Not (1 or 2 or 3 …) in drill down analysis.
    7. Ability to drill down to individual patient’s records for viewing and editing from data mining module (Reports).
    8. Ability to generate lists of patients with missing data at item-level

      Dataset Export

    9. Choice of comma-delimited or XML-formated export of merged dataset (for import into SAS, SPSS, Excel, etc)
  • Bugs fixed:
    1. Zope error when items with itemtype=blank are left blank on the form
    2. 0.9.5b and 0.9.5c bug fixes incoporated

    Grab a copy from the OIO
    Files Library. It’s still only a 355KB download!

    • Ballmer: Linux Threatens MS ‘Core’

    MaximumLinux is reporting on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s recent remarks at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s Internet, Software and Networking Conference ‘…I think you have to rate competitors that threaten your core higher than you rate competitors where you’re
    trying to take from them,” he said. “So in some senses it puts the Linux phenomenon and the Unix
    phenomenon at the top of the list. That really is job one for us, because that’s the threat to the Windows
    business…’

    NYTimes: Digital Doctoring

    The NY Times has a piece on PDA’s in medicine as well as their likely convergence with devices that MD’s are already carrying: ‘…Doctors are often
    festooned with beepers, cell phones mini-tape recorders and hand-
    held computers, said Dr. Lloyd A. Hey.

    “All those devices will eventually be consolidated into a single hand-held
    device,” predicted Dr. Hey, a Duke University surgeon and a founder of
    MDeverywhere, a start-up that offers software to help doctors keep
    track of billable hours…’

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