This week in healthcare saw a few pretty remarkable pieces. From a new mobile perspective on medicine to detecting disease from just your skin, it wasn’t a dull time in the industry. Let’s dissect it…
Cell phones are everywhere. Studies have shown that 91 percent of America's population carries one. We don’t just use them to make calls or play Angry Birds or check our e-mail anymore, though. More and more, they’re becoming healthcare devices that will let us become more healthy – if we let them.
Now they’re being used to remind us to take our prescriptions, which 50 percent of us worldwide don’t even fill, and which contributes to ever-increasing antibiotic resistance, a major health concern.
Vitals, a New York-based developer of online physician information and ratings resources, has launched its first mobile app to allow people to use their mobile devices to research local providers based on patient reviews, according to a story by Eric Wicklund.
The app will also let users create lists of favorite doctors, and store personal information like phone numbers and insurance information. The app is an extension of the Vitals website.
Wicklund reported that roughly 20 percent of the company's current Web traffic comes through mobile devices, “and that number is expected to rise as more and more people become comfortable with smartphones, notebooks and laptops. We have to be there to serve our users in as many different forms as they want to use.”
IBM scientists, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC) now want to make it easier to identify infectious disease outbreaks, joining to standardize the exchange and use of public health information to improve healthcare quality and coordination of care to reduce these outbreaks.
They’ll do so through the use of electronic health records (EHR), according to IBM. Partly to comply with new state and federal efforts to align public health case reporting with Meaningful Use requirements, but also to provide access to critical information, the group will help national, state and local public health agencies better manage communicable illnesses and respond quicker to infectious diseases outbreaks.
Sensors have become the latest miracle in healthcare. There are sensors that check the sugar in your tears to transmit information about your health wirelessly to healthcare providers, ones that you wear to monitor your metabolic functions. There are even sensors that provide a snapshot of the user’s health, including heart rate, respiration, steps taken, activity and sleep patterns for a week. But, brand new sensors stick to your skin. Data from the sensor is then uploaded to a computer or mobile device. People who have heart arrhythmias to asthma will benefit from this kind of sensor.
The news has been full of patient data breaches, and the horror, heartache and humiliation that healthcare organizations have come to feel about their dirty laundry – and ineptness – set out for all to see.
But how do patients feel about all this? Do they worry their electronic health records (EHRs) will be the next to be revealed? CDW decided to do a study of patient perceptions of IT security in healthcare. Who do patients trust to view and manage their personal information? What do patients consider to be their personal information? How do they think EHRs will affect the privacy and security of that personal information? How patients will they likely respond to security breaches?
And finally, what steps should healthcare organizations take to prepare for the new information technology security requirements created by the transition to EHRs?
CDW set out to find out.
