When patients are admitted to the hospital, attending physicians or their designates (e.g. interns and residents) must provide specific instructions on how the patient should be managed while in the hospital. These instructions are often provided through order sets, which are collections of requests for clinical activities, such as: Read further >

I’ve written before about how technology is working hard to make managing your health an easier task – from glucose monitoring systems built into your smart phone to medication bottles that can text you when you forget to take a pill- but do you embrace these changes or give it a wary eye? Read further >

China is beginning a plan to greatly expand their ranks of general practitioners. In 2011, there were only about 80,000 general practitioners; that number is expected to increase to somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 by 2020, and eventually, general practitioners will become the primary healthcare workers in grassroots healthcare institutions. [1] Read further >

Last week, I was fortunate to attend the eBook & Mobility conference together with over 150 inspiring colleagues from around the world. We engaged in passionate discussions and exchanged best practices and successes in the area of mobile. The 2012 edition of the conference centered around mobility as a service fueled by the tailored content from Wolters Kluwer. What where my take-aways? Screens, Voice and Environments. Read further >

As I indicated on this blog in March, the HL7 Infobutton standard was included in the proposed rule for the 2014 EHR certification criteria. In the proposed rule, the use of this standard was required for both linked referential clinical decision support (CDS) and patient-specific education resources. Read further >

According to the Global Food Safety Index, the United States ranks first in the world for overall food safety, followed closely by Denmark, Norway and France. The analysis, which looks at three categories across 105 countries, measures food affordability, food availability and food quality and safety. But what does it say that the number one country for food safety has had 30 food related recalls announced by the Food and Drug Administration in August (2012) alone?And what can technology do to help protect the food supply? Read further >

This is a continuation from The RIGHT way to do a Joint Venture in China (Part 1)

Enhancement #2 – Communication

In many ways, a Joint Venture is similar to a quick marriage with a very short engagement period. It looks great on paper, but the period of really getting to know each other only occurs afterwards. And like any successful marriage the secret to a successful joint venture is communication, communication and more communication. This can be particularly challenging when you have two parties Read further >

Medication safety screening is an important component of patient safety. A key challenge with this type of screening is alert fatigue, which is the tendency for providers to start to ignore alerts that are presented too often. Read further >

Despite global efforts to provide vaccinations to the world’s population to help eradicate disease, some “old” diseases are making new headlines. Polio and pertussis, both once considered all but eradicated, continue to infect individuals around the world, despite health provider’s best efforts. Read further >

Over the past 30+ years, healthcare in China has gone from a system financed mostly by the government and various insurance programs to one financed mostly by individuals, and it’s starting to turn back. After the initial reforms opening China’s economy, and with the goal of using free market principles to drive growth, healthcare expenditures became increasingly privatized. Since healthcare in rural areas was mostly funded by the government, important infrastructure components such as “barefoot doctors” began to disappear, and with most investments going to further develop the high-tier hospitals in big cities, nothing came to take their place. A large inequality developed where the eastern and urban areas had better healthcare, and the rural areas were often lacking even basic healthcare. Modern healthcare reform efforts recognize the importance of government involvement in this industry, and a primary goal of their new reforms is to provide basic healthcare to all citizens. Read further >