Improved E.M.Rs to support Health Rights for All.

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Heres more evidence of how good use of Health care I.T can lower health care costs, and bring health care services closer to all, without discrimination. This study quantifies the enormous savings that can be generated by a simple introduction of one more option within Electronic Medical records to choose the lowest cost generic amongst a list of pre-selected generics ( to ensure quality).

” Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) systems that allow doctors to select lower cost or generic medications could save $845,000 per 100,000 patients per year and possibly more system-wide, according to findings from a new study. Complete use among physicians of e-prescribing system with formulary decision support could reduce prescription drug spending by up to $3.9 million per 100,000 patients per year, according to the researchers”

Doctors using e-prescribing with formulary decision support, which accounted for more than 200,000 filled prescriptions in the study, increased their use of generic prescriptions by 3.3 percent. These changes were above and beyond the increased use of generics that occurred among all doctors and the already high rate of generic drug use in Massachusetts. Based on average costs for private insurers, study authors estimate that the use of e-prescribing could save $845,000 per 100,000 patients per year and generate even higher savings with greater use.

Researchers found that the doctors who wrote electronic prescriptions were slightly younger and more likely to be female than those who did not. In addition, internists, pediatricians, and family physicians made up nearly three-fourths of those who used e-prescribing. Of the 17.4 million prescriptions filled over the course of the study, about 212,000 were prescribed electronically. This study was funded in part by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (HS15175).”

More use of I.T in health care will have a cascading effect on Health Rights for all as it increases affordability, efficiency, quality and information accessibility of health services. And these are few of the basic requirements of Health Rights for All.

HR Health rights

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• Resistance To Use Of Generic Medications By Physicians ‘Discouraging,’ Editorial States

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Indian hospitals ranked for Digital media use

The Cybermetrics Lab recently published their world ranking of hospitals, taking into account the institutional activities in field of e-knowledge and their use of digital media for communications

Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets…The Web covers not only only formal (e-journals, repositories) but also informal scholarly communication.

The Web indicators measure electronic contents, especially those used for scholarly communication, but also basic information about the hospital, its organization, services and personnel. The rank takes into account both the volume of information published and the impact or visibility of such contents measured by the number of external links the web pages receive from others. As expected, about 45 % of top 200 and 38% of top 1000 hospitals are situated in North America.

The Laparoscopy hospital at N.Delhi is the only Indian hospital to figure in the top 100 hospitals from Asia ( 47/100, Asia), and also the only Indian hospital in top 500 worldwide. Amongst the others, Sir Gangaram hospital scores much better than Apollo and Tata Memorial.

L.R.S Institute of Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases records a very enviable world rank of 19, in number of papers and citations visible on Google Scholar., a noteworthy list headed by The Institute of Cancer Research, London.

Below is the list of 9 hospitals from India amongst the first 2000 worldwide , and their world rankings ( as per Cybermetrics Lab).Individual Ranking in various categories for India

India         WORLD RANK	HOSPITAL
(1)                 279	laparoscopy Hospital		406	749	599	140
(2)                624	Sir Ganga Ram Hospital		2,351	788	1,834	225
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(3)                632	Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research Centre		1,015	1,429	1,174	179
(4)                921	Aravind Eye Care System		1,567	2,717	766	146
(5)                1178	Sankara Nethralaya Hospital		2,690	984	1,224	2,200
(6)                1349	L.R.S. Institute of Tuberculosis & Respiratory Diseases		2,845	6,679	1,070	19
(7)                1407	Apollo Hospitals		3,045	938	3,453	2,200
(8)                1819	Tata Memorial Centre		2,459	3,469	322	1,497
(9)                1885	Sri Ramachandra University & Medical Centre		1,742	3,787	1,660	426

Use your cell phone to diagnose diseases.

Microscopy provides a simple, cost-effective, and vital method for the diagnosis and screening of hematologic and infectious diseases.It is an essential tool in disease diagnosis and widely used all over the world. Unfortunately, the EXPERTISE required to use the tool, and to evaluate the findings is not very common. One requires a pathologist with many years of experience to make sense of those seemingly random and confused pixels. ( I know, i am a pathologist

But the advent of digital imaging has solved many of our troubles. Telepathology made sure that we do not need a pathologist physically present at the site, to render a diagnosis. But microscopy and digital imaging of the biopsy/tissue fragment was still a hassle. Now we have done better. You don’t even need a microscope to send a microscopic image over the network!!Researchers from the Univ. of California worked with high-powered LED – which retails for just a few dollars – coupled with a typical camera phone to produce a clinical quality image sufficient for detecting in a field setting some of the most common diseases in the developing world.

The newly developed technology, CellScope, allows for average cell cameras to be retrofitted with powerful microscopes, able to detect malaria parasites, and even fluorescent marker-stained tuberculosis bacteria.Thus you have your humble cell-phone transformed into the “cell-scope”.

(a) Thick smear of Giemsa-stained malaria-infected blood. (b) Thin smear of Giemsa-stained malaria-infected blood. (c) Sickle-cell anaemia blood smear. White arrows point to two sickled red blood cells. Scale bars are 10 µm.

“The images can either be analyzed on site or wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for remote diagnosis. The system could be used to help provide early warning of outbreaks by shortening the time needed to screen, diagnose and treat infectious diseases,” University of California in San Francisco (UCSF)/UCB Bioengineering Graduate Group graduate student David Breslauer adds

Personal mobile slide viewers for Pathologists.

Image via CrunchBase

We have been waiting for this,the optimum integration of communication technology and the practice of pathology to help every pathologist individually.

The InterPath concept is to provide access to a virtual microscope that can be controlled in much the same way as with traditional light microscopy. Pre-scanned frozen sections can be downloaded from designated sites on the Web and viewed in an accompanying viewer that is provided free of charge. Convenient features like selection of image areas, zooming and adjustment of light density are supplied. Using the application rapid specialist referrals can be made, without access to a computer, a microscope or the original specimen.

Interpath for iPhone from IMI on Vimeo.

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Interpath for iPhone from IMI on Vimeo.

We might not be able to use this for diagnosing any borderline cases, but the potential is enormous. It makes taking second opinions simpler than ever before. With evolving technology, we might be free of a fixed workstation for basic microscopic evaluations!

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• Institute for Medical Informatics, announces iPhone application for virtual microscopy
• IBM gets nano-view with new super microscope

The Zorg 2.0 (Health2.0) Event in Nijmegen

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Linked here are some great presentations from the recently held Zorg 2.0 event at Nijmegen

You will see how to make health care more transparent and make the best use of web 2.0 tools to enhance communication and interaction between patient and health care professionals.

This Health 2.0 event was held at Lux in Nijmegen.

Experts in Online marketing, Health IT professionals, entrepreneurs and many others gathered to discuss the best use of Web 2.0 in Health care.

The Zorg 2.0 (Health2.0) Event inNijmegen

It was a great success. The range of talks and perspectives was very broad, but also gave a number of specific good examples of good practice in Health2.0 projects.

Points of note which emerged include-

• Arrange the care around the patients and not around the doctors.
• Train your staff to deal with, to engage and emerge in this vision of healthcare.
• Choose your applications wisely to get, use, adapt or even create your own best applied use of it in your organization.
• It is not about the tools, but about the whole process and workflow around healthcare and your vision.

Wish i could have attended. But i have the next best thing on my Screen via all the numerous Blogs, Photos, twitter updates and videos.

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• The “Green Patient Lab” provides a glimpse of future healing environments
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India needs IT based health delivery system

New Delhi: The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) International Advisory Panel Chairperson Jeffrey Sachs has called upon India to implement IT based health delivery system in the country.

The Columbia University Professor, while praising India’s effort for closing gap on the health mission under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with the other countries, however, said that the country needs to make more investment in the sector. “India should step up the budgetary allocation in health sector to four to five per cent of the GDP,” Sachs said adding that a higher investment in the health sector will give great social returns.

Calling the NRHM as one of the most remarkable achievements in public health sector, he said that India’s dramatic improvement in the health sector have been made possible due to enhanced partnership between the centre, state and local units.

Sachs, who is also the advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, said that the increase in institutional delivery and drop in mortality is especially impressive.

Arguing for an IT-based health delivery system, Sachs added that India can serve as a role model for other countries in the health sector.Having travelled to a few Indian states, he also said that there is, however, a need for more human resources and logistical support.

He was speaking with the media after a meeting with the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss and the senior officials of the Ministry for the fifth meeting of the Panel in New Delhi on Tuesday. The advisory panel meeting was also attended by Health Ministers of three African countries— Kenyan Minister for Medical Services Peter Anyag ‘Nyong’ O, Malawi Minister of Health Khumbo Kachali, and Rawanda’s Minister of Health Rechard Sezibera

Healthcare and emerging technologies

OBBeC.com: Healthcare and Emerging Rich Web Technologies – The WEB 2.0/Semantic Web Challenge and Opportunity

With the advent of 2009, I was looking for something to overview the present situation in Health Informatics. Healthcare related use of the internet is a common phenomenon and an estimated 80% of internet users have used it for obtaining health information. Knowledge body in Health sciences is large and fragmented, and even a treating physician may not have all the data he requires.

There is an urgent need for tools that can aggregate information from
multiple sources to improve health care decision making, enhance health
management, and produce better patient outcomes. This is one of the
main drivers for the use of the Internet in healthcare.

Semantic Web applications and Web 2.0 technologies have yet to be applied to health care.  Privacy issues are of concern, but use of cloud computing within health care delivery system just cannot be held back. Every person has a fundamental right to health, which includes easy access to high quality and best possible care and access to medical information, besides other parameters.

Introducing e-health

A short multimedia course explaining all the implications of the term “e-health”.
A must read+see for all new age doctors.