FDA Public Workshop on MRI Safety
Sept. 20, 2011—The Food and Drug Administration will host a free public workshop Oct. 25 & 26 on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) safety. The purpose of the workshop is to discuss factors affecting the safe use of MRI and approaches to risk mitigation. There is no fee to register for the workshop and registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis. If you wish to attend this Workshop, you must register by 5 pm EDT on October 4, 2011.
Standard Register and Poken Launch Touch-Enabled Products and Services for Healthcare
Sept. 19, 2011—Standard Register and Poken announced today they have joined forces to launch pokenHEALTH™, which Standard Register will market exclusively to healthcare in North America. pokenHEALTH provides interactive, touch-based tools to manage community and professional events. Using Swiss watch-industry microelectronic knowledge, pokenHEALTH runs on a unique, near-field communication-enabled ecosystem of Poken devices, smart phone apps, and tags that allow users to interact with each other and the sponsor.
Brigham and Women’s Teams Up With GNS Healthcare to Fend Off Adverse Events in Heart Patients
September 13, 2011—Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital and its Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, led by David Bates, are announcing a collaboration with GNS Healthcare to use supercomputing technology to improve patient care. Cambridge, MA-based GNS Healthcare’s computer-simulation models will be used to predict the likelihood of adverse drug events and hospital readmission in patients with congestive heart failure.
University of Michigan Health System Selects Connexall for Enterprise-wide Integration at New Facility
Boulder, Colorado, September 13, 2011—The University of Michigan Health System has selected Connexall USA as its system-wide integration platform to connect clinical alarm and alert data from medical devices to communications devices, wireless phones and pagers for its new 348-bed C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital.
Hospital Employees Are Less Healthy and Accrue Higher Healthcare Costs than General Workforce
Sept. 12, 2001—Healthcare spending is 10 percent higher for hospital employees than it is for the general employee population, according to a study released today by the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters.
White House Proclaims National Health Information Technology Week, Sept. 11–16, 2011
Washington DC, Sept. 12, 2011—President Obama has declared the week of Sept. 11-16, 2011, National Health Information Technology Week, and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for health IT has recently added new online resources for patients and providers.
Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) First to Create and Launch Statewide Direct Adoption Program
Providence, Rhode Island, September, 8, 2011—The Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality, safety and value of healthcare in Rhode Island, announced the launch of its statewide Direct Adoption Program.
All Systems Becomes Approved Voalté Reseller
Sarasota, Florida, September 7, 2011—Voalté, a leader in clinical communications technology, today announced a new reseller partnership with All Systems, based in Kansas City, Kan. This partnership allows All Systems to provide the Voalté One smart phone solution to hospitals in Kansas and Missouri.
Paper on Automation in Surgery Wins 2011 Human Factors Prize for Excellence in HF/E Research
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society congratulates Dietrich Manzey, Maria Luz, Stefan Mueller, Andreas Dietz, Juergen Meixensberger, and Gero Strauss on receiving the 2011 Human Factors Prize for their article, “Automation in Surgery: The Impact of Navigated-Control Assistance on Performance, Workload, Situation Awareness, and Acquisition of Surgical Skills.”
AED Failures Connected to Deaths from Cardiac Arrest
Aug. 30, 2011—A study published online last week in Annals of Emergency Medicine reports that more than 1,000 cardiac arrest deaths over 15 years were connected to the failure of automated external defibrillators (AEDs); battery failure accounted for almost one-quarter of the failures.