- 10/25/2013
By now most casual observers of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act in the United States have heard that the launch of the Act’s website on October 1 has been widely described as a train wreck. But it took three weeks before the Canadian press latched on to the fact that the lead technology contractor for Healthcare.gov was a subsidiary of Canada’s largest IT company.
- 10/15/2013
I must open with a caveat: I have no money in the stock market and I'm in no way qualified to assess or offer advice on stock valuations. What I have observed, however, is that with all the talk of the promise of technology in healthcare, investing in this area is by no means a slam dunk.
- 9/17/2013
Getting a health information exchange (HIE) right means ensuring the clinical messaging is secure, and that it works within cross-enterprise environments. For most healthcare managers, that means making sure their health information systems can co-ordinate lab results as well as clinical and discharge summaries.
- 9/3/2013
The supply chain for advanced surgical technologies and products – most notably implantable devices – is complex, involving numerous and substantial fixed costs. Administrators and healthcare managers are at the end of this purchase line, and have to foot the bill. Fortunately, there is room to find savings.
- 8/19/2013
The recent news that a Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) team had won the Innovation Award of Excellence from the International Consortium for Prevention & Infection Control (ICPIC) is proof that, while innovation is hard to predict, there are certain conditions that can allow it to flourish. This is as true in healthcare environments as anywhere else.
- 8/6/2013
Canada Health Infoway was formed in 2001. Its purpose was to accelerate the adoption of information and communications technology (ICT) in healthcare. This mandate was made all the more relevant as the Internet became the dominant ICT platform and promised to transform healthcare delivery the world over.
- 7/22/2013
Go! Physiotherapy, an orthopedic physiotherapy clinic in Vancouver, has turned to mobility and the cloud to get big results. Their story is interesting as it represents how an ongoing interest in new technologies can result in a hybrid solution that covers all the bases. Central to the clinic’s success are two distinct cloud-based solutions: one for scheduling, and the other for more advanced EMR functionality.
- 7/8/2013
News reports of breaches in private healthcare information are a common occurrence these days. Usually technology is front and centre in the discussion, but there are two distinct types of breaches: one, where human error results in access via information technology, and two, where the technology itself is the problem.
- 6/25/2013
Anyone who has been keeping abreast of technology trends will have heard of Big Data, and how it’s about to transform society. Soon every imaginable device will be part of the “Internet of Things” and able to collect and share data. Those organizations that can convert the raw numbers into actionable information will have an edge.
- 6/10/2013
During the recent e-Health 2013 conference in Ottawa, I was given an extensive tour of The Ottawa Hospital to see how its approach to care process management was transforming the way healthcare is delivered there.
- 5/27/2013
The University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) recently announced that it had selected IBM to implement a mobile communications system to support its staff. The system, which is from San Jose, Calif.-based Vocera, is interesting because it's simple, flexible, and is a "bring your own device" (BYOD) strategy for doctors.
- 5/13/2013
Double-lung transplant survivor Hélène Campbell has launched a social media campaign to crowd-fund the financial needs of people waiting for transplants. Called Give2Live, the initiative is an exciting example of how technology unavailable even a few years ago can change funding models – and save lives.
