Patient Care

This page includes news coverage of various aspects of patient healthcare, including new technology innovations, what is working, what is not, personalized medicine and remote and telemedicine delivery. Find specific news in the areas of Care DeliveryDigital TransformationPrecision MedicineRemote Monitoring and Telehealth.

Lancet: Adding MRI doesnt affect reoperation rates for breast cancer

The addition of MRI scans to conventional triple assessment techniques for diagnosis of breast cancer has no effect on the reoperation rate, based on the COMICE trial published in the Feb. 13 issue of the Lancet.

Transformation in small steps

Although individual practitioners and healthcare systems are adopting new IT approaches at almost every level of care, National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, MD, is calling for more innovation. The U.S. health system must take full advantage of the computing technology that has transformed virtually every other aspect of modern life, wrote Blumenthal in a recent commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.

NextGen portfolio to expand with Opus Healthcare purchase

Quality Systems, a provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity software, has entered into an agreement to acquire Opus Healthcare Solutions.

Study: MRI shows link between emotional memory, brain activity

Using sports film and examining the brain as it handles powerful, rapid-fire positive and negative emotions, researchers at Duke University in Durham, N.C., discovered emotion-induced resonance in brain activity and showed that people remember more positive events than negative events, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

GE RIS/PACS links Winter Olympic healthcare facilities

GE Healthcares Centricity Radiology-IW technology will enable medical staff at remote facilities to have real-time access to patient information and images when treating injured athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Agfa-Gevaert taps HealthCare chief Reinaudo as CEO

During its Feb. 9 meeting, the board of directors of Agfa-Gevaert accepted Jo Cornus request to end his mandate as CEO . The board has decided to nominate Christian Reinaudo as his successor, effective immediately.

CDC: Health factors differ significantly between states, counties

A state-based survey that assessed health-risk behaviors, chronic conditions and preventive health in the 54 states and territories, showed that these factors significantly vary on a state-by-state basis and that 2010 health improvement objectives have mostly not been met, according to a report conducted by the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

NexGen, Ingram Micro team up for EHR adoption

Ingram Micro has entered into a new distribution agreement with EHR/practice management company NextGen Healthcare Information Systems to recruit, train and support new partners who help providers take advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 stimulus payments for health IT adoption.

Around the web

U.S. health systems are increasingly leveraging digital health to conduct their operations, but how health systems are using digital health in their strategies can vary widely.

When human counselors are unavailable to provide work-based wellness coaching, robots can substitute—as long as the workers are comfortable with emerging technologies and the machines aren’t overly humanlike.

A vendor that supplies EHR software to public health agencies is partnering with a health-tech startup in the cloud-communications space to equip state and local governments for managing their response to the COVID-19 crisis.