It’s been announced that Allscripts and MyCareTeam (MCT) have launched a new integrated diabetes management solution that will integrate the latter’s application with Allscript’s Enterprise EHR platform.

Patients will leverage “MCT-Clinical for Diabetes,” which after being combined with Allscript’s Electronic Health Records system, will transmit blood glucose readings directly from patient’s glucose meters, along with blood pressure, weight, vital signs, caloric intake and exercise to a central web-based database.  With the Allscripts integration, this data automatically connects to the Allscripts Enterprise EHR, and can create user-defined alerts that are routed to a diabetes educator, a care manager, a nurse, the patient’s primary care physician or, if serious enough, an endocrinologist.  This process facilitates remote monitoring and coaching, increases user compliance with protocols, and most important, based on early results from UMASS and other studies, reduces hospitalizations.

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Yesterday during the HIMSS healthcare IT conference in Las Vegas, mobile network infrastructure provider Aruba Networks released results of a recent survey showing that 85% of hospitals are currently providing access to personal mobile devices.

In addition, the results show that 83% of healthcare IT professionals allow iPads on their enterprise networks and 65% support iPhones and iPod Touch devices.  Interestingly, 52% of hospitals currently support Blackberry devices as well, which is interesting considering RIMs quick decline in the enterprise space over the last year.  The healthcare industry seems to be one last shining spot for RIM’s fledgling enterprise business.  Lastly, Android is gaining major momentum as well, with 46 percent of the IT professionals surveyed allowing enterprise use of the Google OS on personal phones and tablets.

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ChartLogic, a company known for its EHR suite that spans Electronic Medical Records, patient portals, billing/document management and patient education solutions, has announced a new voice recognition overlay technology designed for compatibility with all leading EHR systems.

Called “Stella,” the new solution works similar to Apple’s Siri personal assistant by leveraging the same type of cloud-based natural language processing (NLP) technology to “greatly speed workflow for physicians by enabling them to use iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices with their hospital’s EHR system.”  Voice recognition has long had a place in the healthcare space, and with the proliferation of mobile devices the concept is finally coming to fruition.

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The folks behind the Health 2.0 Conference together with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Innovation (ONC) have launched three new “Investing in Innovation” (i2) Initiative competitions that challenge developer communities to develop innovative health information technology (HIT) solutions.

Like many of the previous competitions we’ve seen from various government agencies and private organizations, the new i2 programs promote the use of technology to “drive better outcomes, engage users in their health and improve healthcare quality.”  The three new challenges being introduced are the “Health Innovations in Commuting Challenge,” “Discharge Follow-Up Appointment Challenge” and the “EHR Accessibility Module Challenge.”

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New research out from CompTIA takes a deep look at adoption of mobile technologies among physicians and healthcare providers — with a focus on smartphone & tablet usage, EMR/EHR implementation, and usage of mobile medical apps.

According to the research one-quarter of healthcare providers surveyed report currently using tablets within their practice, with another 21 percent expect to do so within 12 months.  More than half of healthcare professionals surveyed currently use a smartphone for work purposes.  in addition, about 38 percent of physicians with a mobile device capable of supporting applications use medical-related apps on a daily basis.  Over the next 12 months, however, physicians expect to increase usage of medical apps to the point where 50 percent are using them daily, according to the research.

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Healthcare organizations across the country are busy planning and implementing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in an effort to streamline IT infrastructure, reduce costs and provide better access to health information and care to consumers.  While it’s a move every healthcare organization will eventually have to make, several have already taken the plunge.

Virginia-based Centra Health is one such healthcare organization who’s already implemented a full EHR system across its three hospitals, and Vice President and CIO Ben Clark shared six valuable lessons that were learned along the way.

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A primary goal of the eHealth and mHealth movements we’re seeing these days are to increase access to, and the quality of care — especially in remote or underdeveloped regions of the world.  A new initiative introduced recently in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is a prime example of this.

A company called Health Innovation Systems has partnered with the Brazilian Health Ministry to give every citizen access to their own patient-centric health record in the cloud, delivered through a solution called “Vitacare.”  Rio de Janeiro is a prime testing ground for such an initiative as it’s been found that as much as 75 percent of the population doesn’t have a general practitioner.

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