I've necessarily been thinking a lot about patient safety in recent weeks because my dad suffered needlessly during his last month of life in a hospital with badly broken processes that resulted in poor communication and dangerously uncoordinated care.
I've already said how I believe mobile technology is helping to improve care by putting pertinent information in the hands of patients and...
A small FDA survey of nine hospitals found that the most popular use cases for RFID (radio frequency identification) technology are infusion pumps, portable monitors, wheelchairs, beds, and ventilators. Eight of the nine hospitals surveyed use RFID or RTLS (real time location services) technologies. These hospitals are part of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) MedSun...
Real-time location system (RTLS) provider Awarepoint announced this week a $27 million sixth round of funding. The investment was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), and also included Top Tier Capital Partners, as well as previous investors Cardinal Partners, Venrock, and Jafco Ventures. Awarepoint plans to use the financing to drive further adoption of its Aware360 Platform....
How many to buy iPads? Attendees of a webinar called ”Secure and Manage Enterprise iPads at the Point of Care” were interested in using iPads at the point of care, survey finds: "More than 25 percent of the HIMSS respondents plan to deploy the iPad and other iOS devices immediately and nearly 70 percent plan to deploy the devices within the next year." Release
The iPad can even mitigate...
Boston hospital launches SMS ER wait times: Boston's MetroWest Medical Center launched a texting program last week that enables people to find out emergency room wait times. In the week since it launched 450 people have texted in, according to the report. Users need to text 63311 to 437-411 to get the wait times. That's "Med11" to "4ER411" Boston Globe
Telecom Analyst: Time to splash around is...
Mobile data services for health care will grow to $7.7 billion worldwide by 2014, according to a new report from ABI Research. Specifically, the estimate includes cellular data services and not WiFi. The healthcare industry will account for 10 percent of all global mobile data revenue by 2014. Accessing mobile data services, text messaging and mobile email are the key applications driving...
According to a new report from ABI Research, the healthcare industry's adoption of WiFi has increased by 60 percent during the past 12 months. ABI reported that cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) and wearable wireless sensors have also seen significant growth over the past year, but the firm did not provide any stats to back up that trend claim.
Wireless local area networks (WLAN), real time...
FDA OKs St. Jude wireless implant: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted St. Jude Medical approval for its its Accent RF pacemaker and Anthem RF CRT-P, which feature secure, wireless transmission of data that the clinician or a home monitor can track. St. Jude claims its system is unique as an "integrated system of pacing devices with wireless telemetry from implant through...
According to this Red Herring article, IBM has kicked-off a health IT "gold rush" by announcing four major deals with hospitals it already had prior agreements with. The $19B in the stimulus bill is the obvious cause for this so-called "gold rush" in health IT but read on for more on RH's take on what's next for the "ultra-individualistic and IT tech-resistant health care industry."
A recent...
