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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
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University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to Pilot Mobile Apps
This is a test program using mobile software from MedAptus for point-of-care charge capture and dictation.
The cancer center will pilot Charges In Hand and Notes In Hand, applications that enable physicians to enter charge information and dictate clinical documentation into hand-held devices. The software also will enable physicians to view clinical results via MData software from Durham, N.C.-based Mercury MD Inc. The pilot will involve 50 physicians and begin later this year. M.D. Anderson expects to roll out the applications to an additional 400 physicians over the next two years.
Mercury MD is involved these upcoming Webinars:
On November 2nd at 2:00 PM EST, join Tom Tape, M.D., Chief, General Internal Medicine at The Nebraska Medical Center, as he presents "Improving Clinical Decision Making Through Better Data Access." This 30-minute Webinar will discuss The Nebraska Medical Center's clinical workflow challenges and how the organization achieved a competitive advantage with its mobility initiative. Participants will learn what factors to consider when beginning a mobile initiative, such as implementation processes, necessary resources, and how to drive user-adoption and staff buy-in.
On November 10th at 2:00 PM EST, join John Stanley - VP/CIO at Riverside Health System, and Sharon Chenault, IT Project Manager at Riverside Health System, as they discuss the challenges facing their organization - in a competitive marketplace - and how they continue to invest in technology to strengthen relationships with their medical staff. In this 30-minute Webinar presentation, "Making it Easier to Practice Medicine" John and Sharon will discuss lessons-learned and how Riverside Health continues to drive value for its medical staff.
When I quickly ran by the Mercury MD Web site a little while ago, I see they have a good collection of new white papers. Theirs are usually more informative than the usual product description PDFs generated by some companies.
12:43:18 PM 
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Pilot Program Combines Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology with an 802.11 a/b/g Wireless LAN to Maximize Patient Safety
Here's another clinical use of RFID:
Exavera Technologies Incorporated, innovators in combining wireless technologies to create advanced networks, today announced that Mt. Ascutney Hospital has selected Exavera's eShepherd solution for a pilot deployment. eShepherd combines a high-speed WiFi (802.11a/b/g) network with its family of intelligent RFID-based patient bracelets, staff badges and asset tags.
Unlike the VeriChip which only stores an encrypted ID, eShepherd's RFID bracelets contain a subset of the patient's electronic medical record, including a photograph for positive identification and medical history such as insurance information, allergies, physician contact data and current medications.
It appears that this can also be used to track the patients' movements (hence "eSphepherd"?) using a wireless router, eliminating the need for manual scanning. I don't know if the bracelet concept would work outside of the inpatient population for fear that some would attempt to lend their bracelet to someone who didn't have insurance coverage.
4:07:24 AM
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 Get Chipped™
You can get an idea of the procedure for inserting the VeriChip from this series of illustrations.
It looks like this shouldn't be any more traumatic than a muscle biopsy(!) They do recommend using a local "anisthetic."
The Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) have obtain a copy of a letter from the FDA mentioning certain "potential risks to health":
Among the potential problems the FDA identifies are: "adverse tissue reaction," "migration of the implanted transponder," "failure of implanted transponder," "electrical hazards" and "magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] incompatibilty."
I could imagine the difficulty in removing such an implant if the need should arise. This brings back memories of removing a BB from the arm of a young man. Even with fluoroscopic guidance, it took much longer than I had expected.
3:10:43 AM
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Cell-Phone Link to Inner Ear Tumors Questioned
This story quotes a medical researcher:
"I don't think the data is terribly reliable," said Dr. John Moulder, a medical researcher in the field of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "If you ask someone what side of their head they used a cell phone eight years ago, I'm not sure how accurate that would be," he told NewsFactor.
This is the bias I mentioned in my post days ago. I think it's important to explain how retrospective case-control studies work. I was just reading a report about a Mexican study suggesting that breast cancer is associated with high carbohydrate diets. Again, I don't know how reliable you can extrapolate the data when you haven't proven causality, especially when it is looking at a diet from a different culture.
2:03:35 AM
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© Copyright
2004
Bill Koslosky, MD.
Last update:
11/10/2004; 7:33:33 AM.
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