How will clinical engineering adjust as healthcare reform pushes more clinical equipment outside hospital settings and into nontraditional, non-acute care facilitiesincluding homes? Thats one of the questions Barry L. Graf will ask attendees to contemplate at the second annual conference of the Clinical Engineering Association of Illinois in Oak Brook, Ill., Aug. 24 and 25, where he will be one of four presenters in a panel discussion on healthcare reform.

As facilities race to meet meaningful use compliance deadlines, operating rooms will need to overhaul paper-based systems and consider adding an anesthesia information management system (AIMS). Linking the AIMS to disparate systems within the hospital will be no easy feat. The best advice from veterans? Get started now, as an AIMS can gather data and run reports for benchmarking purposes, improve patient records and potentially boost patient safety and revenues.

While the developing technology is expensive, KLAS, the Orem, Utah-based research firm, found that providers utilizing PET/CT imaging technology save time and improve image resolution, based on a survey of providers. However, GE Healthcare edged out Philips and Siemens in KLAS first report on PET/CT vendors, titled PET/CT 2011: New Technologies in Focus.

Johns Hopkins biomedical graduate students may end up taking specific courses on key biological processesgene expression, metabolism, cell fate and functionif the university decides to change its structure for the first time in 30 years, a move two education leaders advocate in a commentary scheduled for publication in the Aug. 19 issue of Cell.

When examining how to better manage the processes and advanced imaging data across a healthcare enterprise, administrators are going to have to take a business savvy approach to their practices, said presenters at this weeks AHRA conference in Dallas.

Researchers identified five solutions to issues encountered during the implementation of procedures to reduce transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in six intensive care units. Those lessons can serve as building blocks for future change initiatives, authors asserted in a study published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemology.

Cleveland Clinic spinoff ImageIQ has partnered with its former parent organization, along with the National Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Cleveland Cord Blood Center, to develop software for assessing umbilical cord blood for the potential of its stem cells.

The U.K. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has updated its chronic heart failure (HF) guidelines to outline better management strategies of the disease. The guidelines focus on serum natriuretic peptide levels, echocardiography, drug therapy, cardiac resynchronization (CRT), implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and disease monitoring for HF patient management. Yet, an accompanying editorial questioned whether guidelines will be enough, adding that fully engaging the patient and focusing on values may be just as important.