MASSDEVICE ON CALL — St. Jude Medical Inc. (NYSE:STJ) and Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) logged some important wins in the neurostimluation arena this week, making progress on treatments for pain, depression and high blood pressure.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Johnson & Johnson may face up to $1 billion in lawsuits, analysts say
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) could shell out up to $1 billion for lawsuits concerning its subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics and the metal-on-metal hip implants that were found to shed minute metal particles into a patient’s bloodstream over time.
Health IT firm Explorys adds California health system to network
Will uncertainty bring down another cardiac implant market?
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Uncertainty surrounding the use of cardiac stents and angioplasty balloons may lead to a market backlash against the devices and their makers.
At least 4 percent and up to 12 percent of percutaneous coronary interventions may be implanted outside of industry-recommended guidelines, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. yesterday.
CMS Clarifies Electronic Transmission
One of the more confusing items about Meaningful Stage 1 is what constitutes a test of electronic record exchange. The HIT Standards Committee did not specify transport standards, so there are no certification criteria to test the ability of an EHR to send data from place to place.
It was unclear what kinds of transport constitute a valid test of data exchange – Bluetooth between iPhones? e-Fax? USB Drives?
Electronic medical records: Making patient engagement useful
Stage 2 of Meaningful Use is likely to include numerous patient engagement features.
BIDMC has been offering Personal Health Records since 1999 and we’ve learned that patient information must be organized appropriately and wrapped in patient education materials so that the data is transformed into knowledge, and is actionable.
Supporting electronic health records for non-owned doctors
Implementing electronic health records requires transformation of a medical practice. It’s more about workflow and change management than technology. In Massachusetts, competitive pressures, pay for performance contracts, and increasing demands from specialists to be connected to primary care givers are motivating clinicians to install electronic health records. The challenge is how to pay for them and how to provide the services necessary to ensure successful implementation.
Goodbye Google Health: The software giant’s EMR platform shuts down
Google announced plans to shut down Google Health by the end of the year, ending the company’s foray into the electronic health record arena.
Google Health is a no-charge service aimed at providing a one-stop repository for an individual’s medical records and health information, complete with features that set personal health goals, track progress and share health information with physicians, family and friends.
Supreme Court hands drug companies two big wins for commercial use of prescription data and lawsuits over generic drug labels
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Big pharma logged two important wins in the nation’s highest court yesterday, freeing prescription data for commercial sale and limiting lawsuits filed by people harmed by generic drugs.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Vermont law banning "detailing" of prescription information collected by pharmacies, allowing drug companies to mine prescriber-identifiable prescription info to target marketing toward physicians based on the kinds of medicine they tend to prescribe.
The court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the drug companies.
Birth control implants are safe, effective and unpopular.
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Intrauterine devices and contraceptive skin implants are more effective and require less maintenance than condoms or birth control pills, but the vast majority of women stick with the more traditional methods.
Intrauterine devices, which release small amounts of either copper or progestin in the uterus to prevent pregnancy, amount to less than 6 percent of contraceptive use. The skin implants were only approved in 2006, so less is know about their use.
Software security: Electronic medical records more vulnerable to physical theft than hackers
Software Advice’s "Wall of Shame"
The threat of hacking electronic medical records may be a concern to many health care providers, but software experts argue that physical theft and human error are much bigger problems.
Using data published by the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Software Advice, a computer consultation service, combed through reports of medical record breaches and found that physical theft and loss accounted for more than 60 percent of all security breaches.
Hacking comprised just 6 percent of the breaches.