Tag: Technology Corner

Not only do baby-tracking apps make it easy to capture every aspects of baby’s life, they also make it extremely easy to share baby’s data with all caregivers. In fact, it is automatic. Once you set your first caregiver account on one of these apps, you can then invite and authorize additional caregivers.

Americans have a history of coming together in times of great need. KatrinaHealth.org was created shortly after the storm hit to provide a central point of access to evacuees’ prescription histories by authorized healthcare professionals. In less than a month, 150 organizations pulled together to create the site (including businesses in competition with each other). Today, we are still impressed by the collective effort — enabled by health information technology (HIT) — that provided critically important information to support the continuation of car

Nearly all U.S. adults now have the needed technology — a cell phone — to send and receive texts. Text messaging is simple and familiar. Not only is nearly everyone able to send and receive texts, most people text regularly and are therefore comfortable with the practice.

It’s been 17 years and 95 articles. 17 years ago the term “health information technology” was not in vogue. The intent of our column has always been to inform readers about emerging technologies that can support their practice immediately, while not venturing into bleeding-edge technologies that are not ready for widespread implementation or are too risky for you to devote scarce resources to.

A quick Google search for “popular tech gifts of 2016” returns a very large number of lists from a variety of authoritative sources. While we sometimes recommend tech newbies stay away from the bleeding edge items, there are a number of popular tech gifts that are ready for prime time usage by even the latest tech adopters.

We absolutely know you don’t have time to have your head in the clouds, envisioning a future scenario where technology allows you to morph your practice into another unanticipated level. We also fear that many of you are spending most of your waking moments in the weeds of survival in your practice, while changes are afoot that can dramatically impact your business.

The healthcare space continues to evolve, partially in response to the increasingly numerous and glaring shortfalls patients experience in terms of poor outcomes. Possibly an even greater driver to the changes you are experiencing in your practice is the continually rising cost of care. A single healthcare dollar can be divided into an array of expense areas, including inpatient hospital stays, nursing home and home healthcare costs, administrative fees, and physician and clinic services. Did we forget medications?

Bill just returned from a health benefit managers’ business coalition meeting where national leaders were telling attendees that employers need to control healthcare costs going forward.

Imagine the possibilities for getting the right information to the right patient at the right time by incorporating the use of information technology into the dispensing process.