Raising an alarm, doctors struggle to yank hospital ICUs into the modern era

Interesting article on the need to revise and upgrade ICUs – https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/07/hospital-icu-modernize/  with a focus on connecting systems that currently don’t talk to one another. Points out a lot of the flaws – too many alarms and alarm fatigue; too much data – hard to tease out what’s important in all of that information (about 2000 data points per patient per day); devices that can’t share information nor share information with an electronic record. Some insights into how to fix it – some simple apps and sensors, sharing of data (dependent on manufacturer’s building in interoperability), including the patient and family, using additional expertise via telemedicine connections.

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Are the Government’s “Meaningful Use” Standards Meaningful?

An interesting article from Forbes magazine talking about the US governments definitions of “meaningful use”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnosborn/2014/03/17/are-the-governments-meaningful-use-standards-meaningful/

The author’s of the opinion that while the definition set out by the government may not be the greatest, the health IT field is still making large strides towards a digital healthcare world. He also points out that its not just the big guys like IBM and Cisco, several small companies have also been successful in both software development, implementation, and management of health information.