HHS issues final rule for Health IT Certification

PARCA eNews – Oct. 6, 2015 – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today released final rules that simplify requirements. The new rules add new flexibilities for providers to make electronic health information available when and where it matters most and for health care providers. For consumers the aim of the revised rules are to make patient information readily, safely, through secure information exchange. 

ONC has published 2015 Edition Health IT Test procedures

PARCA eNews – Oct. 6, 2015 – ONC has adopted a new format for test procedures that is less prescriptive and more outcome-focused. ONC released draft test procedures concurrently with the release of the 2015 Edition proposed rule. 

Biomedical imaging at one-thousandth the cost

MIT researchers have developed 

a new biomedical imaging system 

that harnesses an off-the-shelf 

depth sensor such as Microsoft’s 

Kinect.

MIT News Office  – Nov. 23, 2015 – researchers have developed a biomedical imaging system that could ultimately replace a $100,000 piece of a lab equipment with components that cost just hundreds of dollars.

The system uses a technique called fluorescence lifetime imaging, which has applications in DNA sequencing and cancer diagnosis, among other things. So the new work could have implications for both biological research and clinical practice. The MIT researchers reported the new work in the Nov. 20 issue of the journal Optica.

DoD Meets Interoperability Requirements for Electronic Health Records

PARCA eNews – Nov. 20, 2015 – The Defense Department has met the interoperability requirements for electronic health records as called for in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014, according to DoD officials.

DoD and Veterans Affairs have two goals in integrating patients' records and making the information accessible by both agencies, said Chris Miller, the program executive officer for 

Defense Healthcare Management Systems. Those goals, he said, are to create a seamless health record, and modernize the software that clinicians and analysts in both agencies use.

Maintaining flexible accessibility with PACS-EMR integration

Antonia Wells, Chief Research &
Development Officer

By some estimates over 90 percent of the data in medical science is attributed to imaging. Whatever the actual number may be, it was certainly a factor in IBM’s decision to acquire Merge Healthcare, announced in August. Merge Healthcare is a Chicago-based provider of enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems aimed at advancing healthcare. It was recently recognized as a top vendor in the KLAS 2015 Midterm Performance Review: Software & Services report. It provides enterprise and cloud-based technologies for image intensive specialties that provide access to any image, anywhere, any time. Merge’s technology platforms are used at more than 7,500 U.S. healthcare sites, as well as most of the world’s leading clinical research institutes and pharmaceutical firms to manage a growing body of medical images. Merge also provides clinical trials software with end-to-end study support in a single platform and other intelligent health data and analytics solutions.  PARCA eNews spoke with Merge’s Antonia (Toni) Wells, Chief Research & Development Officer at Merge Healthcare, Mark Bronkalla, vice president of Solutions Management, and Jim Boritz, VP PACS Development about integrating PACS with EMRs and EHRs.  In the Q&A format below, T. stands for Antonia, M. is Mark and J. is Jim.

PARCA eNews returns to bi-monthly distribution

PARCA has been trialing the monthly distribution of our newsletter. The decision to move to a monthly distribution trial was triggered by survey results indicating a preference for monthly, and by the Board’s desire to improve the engagement with our members, and, in addition, the increase in quality worldly PACS related material. During the last month, the PARCA board has re-assessed our trial and our engagement policy and found that whilst the quality of our content has improved, you, the members have been less likely to review the newsletter. As such, the decision has been made to return to newsletters being produced every two months.

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News Roundup

Electronic health record product certifications terminated

PARCA eNews – Sept. 2, 2015 – The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced that two electronic health record (EHR) products, previously certified as products that may be used as part of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, had their certifications terminated. 

NCQA launches new eMeasure Certification Program

PARCA eNews –  Sept. 22, 2015 – The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has launched an eMeasure Certification program to certify an organization’s software code that produces electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) results.

Final Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020 Released

PARCA ENews – Sept. 21, 2015 – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with over 35 federal partners, today released the updated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015–2020 (Plan).

Working from home: a growing trend among UK radiologists

Photo from UKRC conference gallery

PARCA eNews – Sept. 16, 2015 – Working from home is growing trend and spurred a spirited debate at the recent 2015 U.K. Radiological Congress (UKRC).

Noting that flexibility of working from home is a major reason many radiologists sign up with teleradiology companies. The questions of supporting a home workstation, security and privacy, not to mention administrative concerns about work hours and intrusions of home and family obligations were passionately discussed in a plenary debate, as reported by Phillip Ward, AuntMinnieEurope.com.