Leadership Survey Reveals Top Priorities for Healthcare Leaders

PARCA eNews – April 13, 2015 – The results of the annual HIMSS leadership survey of more than 300 participants, examined key trending issues impacting the business of healthcare including patient considerations, security concerns, insurance models and policy mandates. 

The results showed: 

Big Data takes shape with IBM’s HIMSS 2015 announcement

PARCA eNews – April 22, 2015 – The nebulous vision of big data in healthcare became a bit clearer at HiMSS 2015 with IBM’s announcement of Watson Health.

Watson is IBM’s supercomputer that has been looking for a purpose for several years following its famous stint as a game show contestant on Jeopardy. With Watson Health, IBM is staking out a claim on a huge parcel of the cloud. With partners Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Apple, together with

HiMSS survey shows push to mobile health IT continues

HiMSS News – Today, at the HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, HIMSS released the results of the 2015 HIMSS Mobile Technology Survey. This year’s study, of more than 200 healthcare provider employees, found that nearly 90 percent of respondents are utilizing mobile devices within their organizations to engage patients in their healthcare. The report also showed that respondents believe that mHealth technologies are beginning to drive cost savings and improve the quality of care delivered.

Apple Announces ResearchKit for medical researchers

PARCA eNews – April 14, 2015 – Apple® today announced ResearchKit™, a software framework designed for medical and health research that helps doctors, scientists and other researchers gather data more frequently and more accurately from participants using mobile devices.

Where has all the PACS innovation gone?

PACS issues

PARCA eNews – April 13, 2015 – Since 2005, there has been little innovation in medical image storage and communications systems, according to Catherine Tucker, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

In a study of the medical IT sector, Tucker contends that the reason, is a broken US patent system that allows people and companies to patent ideas without ever actually having to create a new product.

Health IT security more than HIPAA compliance

With the recent Anthem security breach, healthcare information security has once again taken center stage. With congress scrutinizing HIE security plans PARCA eNews talked with Cris V. Ewell, PhD, the Chief Information Security Officer at Seattle Children’s, about security. Seattle Children’s is a not-for-profit pediatric hospital, academic medical center, and research institute. Dr. Ewell has full strategic and operational oversight for building and managing the information security framework, teams, programs, and policies. He is a frequent speaker at healthcare industry privacy and information security forums and

HIMSS15 set to begin April 12

Save the Date! 

Apr 12 – 16, 2015 Central Time

Chicago, McCormick Place

HIMSS Annual Conference is the largest health IT event in the industry. Nearly 38,000 attendees came to Orlando for HIMSS14. Healthcare IT professionals, clinicians and executives from around the world will gather to explore the value of health IT through education, networking and solutions – discovering new ways to advance innovation, make a greater impact and improve outcomes.

Draft bill aims to improve interoperability

PARCA eNews – Mar. 13, 2015 – Draft legislation was circulated last week entitled Ensuring Interoperability of Qualified Health Records aimed at enhancing nationwide progress toward interoperabiltiy.  It defines interoperability as a qualified electronic health record that must satisfy the following criteria: open access, complete access to health data, does not block access to other qualified electronic health records, and asks for additional recommendations. Among its provisions, the bill:

Office of Cybersecurity and Communications public meeting

PARCA eNews – Mar. 6, 2015 –The Office of Cybersecurity and Communications department of Homeland Security held a public meeting on March 18, 2015 regarding cybersecurity information sharing, Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAO’s), and the Executive Order, “Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing,” that was signed by President Obama on Feb. 13, 2015. 

A pair of presentations at ECR 2015 show off REMS software

PARCA eNews – Mar. 5, 2015 – Successful connection of various vendor's radiation producing equipment to Radiation Exposure Monitoring Systems (REMS) is a challenge and integration into hospital or radiology information systems (HIS/RIS) introduces further layers of difficulty. 

As Aunt Minnie writer Erik Ridley reports, an Irish research group showed that a web-based dose tracking software could track and analyze CT studies, while German group showed that a cloud-based system using DICOM structured reports was a feasible alternative for dose tracking.