Some Beacon grant money goes to SMS alerts: At least a part of the $220 million in grant monies that make up the Beacon Community program will fund mobile technologies in healthcare. A consortium in California headed up by UCSD Medical Center received some $15.3 million in grant monies to improve its EMR systems so doctors could more easily share information. According to a report from Sign On San Diego, some of the funds will enable patients to have greater access to their medical records online and enable care providers to send patients text messages about laboratory results, medication reminders and alerts regarding checkups that are due. The consortium also includes Scripps Health, Sharp HealthCare, the San Diego VA Healthcare System, San Diego Naval Medical Center, Rady Children’s Hospital, the San Diego Council of Community Clinics, the county office of Emergency Medical Services and the San Diego County Medical Society. More

Hospital websites go mobile: Geonetric announced that it has created mobile phone optimized websites for three care provider groups: Southern Regional Health System, Methodist Medical Center of Illinois, and Genesis Health System. More

Wireless biometric sensor platform concept: LynuxWorks is partnering with Portwell on a proof of concept wireless health sensor platform based on Intel chips: "The PoC platform can connect to more than 25 Bluetooth wireless biometric sensors and has the ability to graphically portray patient sensor data for visual monitoring in a familiar Windows environment." More

WLSA event next week! Xconomy has a nice preview piece on the WLSA event coming up next week in La Jolla, California. (We'll be there!) More

What nurses want from HIT: A report out of the UK about health information technologies for nurses found that the top technologies wanted by nurses included real time view of stock levels, electronic records, systems to track equipment, and bar-coded wristbands to accurately identify patients. More