This week in Obamacare, the U.S. government bid "adieu" to Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique (CGI) Federal, the Canadian contractors that infamously botched the HealthCare.gov rollout.
CGI Federal had successfully completed some U.S. government IT projects in the past, such as putting together the widely praised FederalReporting.gov website in six weeks for a low cost. However, after the HealthCare.gov snafu, the U.S. government will not renew the company's contract in February. Instead, Accenture, a company with extensive healthcare experience, will take up the Obamacare open enrollment mantle.
As it turns out, CGI Federal doesn't have such a great healthcare IT track record. The province of Ontario hired CGI Federal to build a healthcare medical registry for diabetes sufferers within the country, but their performance was so poor that, after three years of missed deadlines, the Ontario government dropped the $46.2 million contract. The moral of the story? The U.S. government should keep CGI Federal far, far away from future healthcare IT projects.
In this week's private industry news, Google revealed an X Labs device that can test patients for diabetes markers. The beauty of the device is that it's wearable; in fact, it's a contact lens. Instead of pricking their fingers to test blood glucose, diabetics could wear their Google contact lens, and the lens, using a miniature glucose monitor and a wireless chip embedded between two layers of contact lens material, could provide real-time blood glucose levels.
Also this week, Analog Devices unveiled meter-on-a-chip technology that is designed to support both portable health monitoring devices and sophisticated point-of-care diagnostic devices. The chip can support exceptionally detailed physiological, electrochemical and biological data collection thanks to its 16-bit accurate analog front-end (AFE) with a configurable multi-sensor switch matrix, hardware waveform generator and discrete Fourier transform (DFT) engine.
Additionally, the chip, called the ADuCM350, utilizes an industry standard software development environment. Therefore, developers have a complete ecosystem of support for the device development process from hardware to applications when they employ the ADuCM350 in their creations.
These stories are just a snippet of what occurred within the Health Techzone this week. To get all of the healthcare technology news you can handle, visit the Health Techzone daily and follow us on Twitter @HealthTechzone
