U-Minn Medical Center nurses ditch pagers: The nurses began using ASCOM handsets about six months ago, seeking to cut down on the time it takes to answer patient calls.
Health Technology
Healthcare data analysis provider Humedica launches with $30 million
Boston-based healthcare data analytics provider Humedica launched with $30 million in venture backing.
The company said (PDF) it plans to offer a software-as-a-service solution to inpatient and outpatient healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, medical device manufacturers, government agencies and financial services firms.
Humedica’s backers include Bain Capital Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners and Leerink Swann.
Weekly Wireless Roundup: The real top medical iPhone apps (money-making edition)
The real top medical iPhone apps (money-making edition): Apple’s list of the top 200 highest-grossing applications in its iTunes App Store.
Shareholders slap CardioNet with lawsuits
Shareholders of CardioNet Inc. are suing the mobile cardiac monitoring firm and two of its senior managers, alleging that they falsely inflated the company’s prospects ahead of a damaging reimbursement rate cut.
The lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania, accuse CardioNet, chairman, president and CEO Randy Thurman and CFO Martin Galvan of issuing too-aggressive earnings forecasts that sent the company’s stock soaring to artificially high levels.
Perceptive Informatics upgrades its image with Optasia Medical
Perceptive Informatics and Optasia Medical Inc. signed an imaging measurement deal for studies of osteoarthritis in knees.
The agreement calls for Cambridge, Mass.-based Perceptive, which is the clinical trial data management arm of Parexel International Corp., to use Sudbury, Mass.-based Optasia’s KneeAnalyzer software to enhance image analysis of the knee in osteoarthritis patients.
Athenahealth to guarantee stimulus cash for docs
Athenahealth Inc. is putting down a marker for doctors who sign up for its electronic medical records service: A guarantee that they’ll receive their fair share of up to $44,000 in Medicare payments for proving “meaningful use” of EMRs.
That’s a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act designed to push the digitization of medical records. Doctors’ offices that demonstrate as-yet-undefined “meaningful use” of EMR technology starting in 2011 will be eligible for the payments.
Wireless connectivity and medical devices
Boston recently played host to the first-ever conference dedicated to the integration of medical devices and information systems, the Inaugural Medical Device Connectivity Conference and Exhibition.
The conference, which attracted more than 200 attendees and dealt with the technical and clinical issues associated with acquiring, pooling, and interpreting data from various medical devices, was especially timely considering a key aspect of the latest Obama gold rush (AKA the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF)).
Weekly Wireless Roundup: CardioNet enhances cardiac monitoring
CardioNet enhances cardiac monitoring: CardioNet announced new features for its remote cardiac monitoring and diagnostic MCOT system to give physicians more in-depth data.
Dell jumps into the EMR pool
There’s a new player in the push to digitize patients’ medical records, which is a big ($19 billion) part of president Barack Obama’s $900 billion healthcare reform plan: Computer colossus Dell.
Weekly Wireless Roundup: Microsoft HealthVault leaps out of beta
Microsoft HealthVault leaps out of beta: Late last week, Microsoft’s HealthVault platform and personal health data repository, which the company is loathe to call a personal health record, exited from “beta” status.
Are docs the biggest obstacle to EMR adoption?
A large part of the savings President Barack Obama aims to wring from the healthcare system are predicated on widespread adoption of electronic medical records.
In fact, the initiative is so important that the Obama administration set aside $20 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and appointed an EMR czar to push doctors’ offices and hospitals to start using the systems.
But as an Ohio cardiologist and blogger, Dr. Westby Fisher, writes at MedCity.com, physicians themselves could prove to be the initiative’s biggest hurdle.