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.

AJR: MRI may help physicians diagnose, stage and treat diabetes

MRI may aid physicians in the early diagnosis, staging and treatment of diabetes, according to research in this month's American Journal of Roentgenology.

Image reformation aids MR breast cancer screening

Advanced visualization technology aided diagnostic interpretation during the U.K. MRI in Breast Screening (MARIBS) trial, which recruited 732 women--who had at least a 50 percent risk of being a breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1), BRCA2 or TP53 gene mutation carrier--for an annual breast MRI and two-view mammogram over a nearly seven-year period (Aug. 1997- March, 2003).

Lancet: High-field MRI offers non-invasive alternative to fetal autopsy

Whole-body high-field MRI is a reliable option for post-mortem examination of human fetuses and might provide a non-invasive alternative to conventional autopsy, according to a U.K. study published online Aug. 6 in Lancet.

Oregon to license MR, ultrasound techs

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski has signed into law a bill requiring medical imaging professionals who provide sonography and MRI to have state licenses.

ANSI approves RFID standard for tagging medical devices

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has approved the Health Industry Business Communications Councils new standard for using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags for medical products.

HHS hosts first CONNECT Code-a-Thon

Open-source programmers will be getting together on Aug. 27 for the first CONNECT Code-A-Thon at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Washington, D.C., with the goal of developing software that can eventually be used for a Nationwide Health Information Network.

Boston Sci sees Q2 income uptick on strong stent, CRM sales

Boston Scientific has reported positive financial earnings for its fiscal 2009 second quarter, which ended June 30. The Natick, Mass.-based medical device company booked a net income of $158 million this quarter, compared with $98 million in the second quarter of 2008.

KLAS: Critical-access hospitals seek more IT options

Facing the same 'meaningful use' deadlines as larger organizations but with only a few viable vendor options, critical-access hospitals (hospital with 50 or fewer beds) are eager for more IT power, according to a report from market research firm KLAS.

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.