International health IT week in review: March 6

Pulse+IT's weekly weekend round-up of international health IT and eHealth news:

Stars are aligned' for health IT - Freeman
Digital Health News ~ Staff writer ~ 03/03/2016

Health ministers are “completely behind” the digitisation of health and social care because “it is urgent for personal care, it is urgent for safe care, and it is urgent for research”, life sciences minister George Freeman has said.

mHealth4Afrika takes on maternal health
eHealth News ZA ~ Sikhumbuzo Hlabangane ~ 03/03/2016

mHealth4Afrika has received a €3 million Horizon 2020 grant to create an app for managing patient information within the public healthcare sector.

Sage Bionetworks releases data from first six months of Parkinson's mPower ResearchKit study
MobiHealthNews ~ Aditi Pai ~ 02/03/2016

Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit biomedical research organization that developed the ResearchKit app mPower, has announced that it will release the first six months of data from the app.

Fast-growing medical scribe industry poses risks to patients, and to product design
Healthcare IT News ~ Mike Milliard ~ 02/03/2016

As electronic health records have proliferated in recent years, so has the use of medical scribes.

Healthcare cyberattacks occur almost monthly
FierceHealthIT ~ Susan D Hall ~ 02/03/2016

Healthcare organizations face about one cyberattack per month and are still struggling to find effective strategies to keep systems secure, according to new research from the Ponemon Institute.

Proposed rule would give ONC power to conduct direct reviews of certified HIT products
FierceEMR ~ Dan Bowman ~ 01/03/2016

A newly proposed rule announced by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Tuesday would enable the agency to conduct direct reviews of certified health IT products.

Safety collaborative releases copy and paste safety guide
FierceEMR ~ Marla Durben Hirsch ~ 01/03/2016

The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, a collaborative convened by the ECRI Institute, has released its safe practice recommendations for using the copy and paste function in electronic health record systems.

Surescripts activates National Record Locator Service, includes data on 140 million patients
Healthcare IT News ~ Bill Siwicki ~ 01/03/2015

Health information network Surescripts announced at HIMSS16 Tuesday the nationwide activation of its National Record Locator Service, a service designed to give providers a way to obtain a more complete view of a patient’s health history.

Resource constraints hamper hospital cybersecurity efforts
FierceHealthIT ~ Susan D Hall ~ 01/03/2016

Despite growing cybersecurity threats against healthcare organizations, many continue to struggle with lack of resources, according to new research from HIMSS Analytics and Symantec Corp.

ONC releases report to Congress on HIT progress, barriers
FierceHealthIT ~ Katie Dvorak ~ 01/03/2016

In its annual report on the state of HIT to Congress, the Office of the National Coordinator looks back at the progress it made in 2015 and at the barriers that still need to be overcome.

EHR giants Epic, Cerner, Meditech among those taking pledge to standardize health IT
Healthcare IT News ~ Bernie Monegain ~ 29/02/2016

Nearly every big name in healthcare technology has pledged to use standardized APIs, to make patient access easier and to not block information, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced during her HIMSS16 keynote Monday night.

Cybersecurity pro: networked medical devices pose huge risks to patient safety
Healthcare IT News ~ Mike Milliard ~ 29/02/2016

The standing-room-only status of the HIMSS16 Cybersecurity Symposium on Monday told the story: The healthcare industry finally grasps the acute risk posed by cybercriminals to hospital systems and medical devices.

Digital Child Health Hub proposed
Digital Health News ~ Rebecca McBeth ~ 29/02/2016

NHS England wants to create a Digital Child Health Hub to bring together information on a child’s health from multiple systems.

Canada’s first VNA installed in Peterborough
Canadian Healthcare Technology ~ Jerry Zeidenberg ~ 29/02/2016

The $2.5 million implementation not only replaces an eight-year-old radiology PACS, but it will provide storage and advanced reporting tools for cardiology studies, as well as DICOM and non-DICOM images from all other ‘ologies’ in the hospital, such as pathology and dermatology.

HIMSS Analytics rolls out new EMRAM criteria and value score
Healthcare It News ~ Bill Siwicki ~ 26/02/2016

The major update to its electronic medical record adoption model and the value score quality measurement are designed to help provider organizations boost health IT efforts.

NHI gets R4.5 billion boost
eHealth News ZA ~ Sikhumbuzo Hlabangane ~ 26/02/2016

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has allocated R4.5 billion for the 11 National Health Insurance (NHI) pilot sites over the medium term.

Are patient portals a valuable tool or time waster?
Medical Economics ~ David Raths ~ 25/02/2016

Patient portals were intended to streamline and improve patient care, but like many technology innovations, portals have suffered from the combination of shaky initial product rollouts and user error from a population not totally sold on the concept.

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