Theyre everywhere. Mobile computers are on the move in the ER and OR, atop carts as physicians make rounds, and in the hands of nurses logging vital signs at the bedside or dispensing meds. With the growing adoption of EMRs, mobile computing use among hospital-based clinicians has moved beyond standalone, knowledge-based applications such as drug reference databases and medical calculators to systems that can increase clinician productivity, reduce errors and eliminate inefficient processes.

Amidst the excitement of the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting in San Francisco this week comes the news that its co-founder, Martin B. Leon, MD, is once again being investigated for potential conflicts of interest and unreported income from medical device makers.

The 21st annual scientific symposium of the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting will open on Monday in San Francisco. Gregg W. Stone, MD, immediate past-chairman of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, which sponsors TCT, highlighted some of the trials and important sessions at next weeks show.

A study in today's online edition of the American Journal of Public Health has found that nearly 45,000 deaths annually are associated with a lack of health insurance.

Between 2007 and 2008, the number of people covered by private health insurance decreased from 202 million to 201 million, while the number covered by government health insurance climbed from 83 million to 87.4 million, according to statistics released yesterday through the U.S. Census Bureau.

Cardiac-resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-Ds) decreased the risk of heart failure events in relatively asymptomatic patients with a low ejection fraction and wide QRS complex, compared with those who received implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) alone, according to a MADIT-CRT trial presented Tuesday at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

New Jersey radiologist Bruce N. Saffran, MD, who was awarded about $500 million in a 2008 patent infringement case against Boston Scientific, filed suit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over Abbott's Xience V everolimus-eluting coronary stent.

Franklin & Seidelmann, a radiology interpretations provider, has appointed Clayton T. Larsen as senior vice president of marketing for the firm.