A Medical Device Daily

The Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS; Chicago) annual conference in Atlanta is the place to be for Health IT companies this week – especially those with product news to share. This sector has seen a surge of new product releases and product upgrades this week.

Among the companies showcasing new solutions this week during HIMSS10 – as organizers and attendees have dubbed it – is GE Healthcare (Little Chalfont, UK).

GE launched its next-generation eHealth Solutions platform — an infrastructure offering that includes expanded services for health information exchange, a clinical portal and a patient health management system. The new platform is designed for international as well as domestic customers and can be adapted for regional markets in either hosted or deployed models, GE noted.

“Healthcare professionals around the world recognize that connecting the healthcare IT ecosystem has enormous potential to improve the quality of health outcomes and to reduce costs,“ said Vishal Wanchoo, president/CEO of GE Healthcare IT. “Our new eHealth Solutions platform builds upon our years of experience in clinical information exchange, can help our domestic customers leverage their existing software while helping them meet several meaningful use criteria, and provide our global customers with a foundation and toolset for building national-level EHR infrastructure.“

At the core of the new eHealth Solutions platform is the eHealth Information Exchange (HIE) – a standards-based HIE infrastructure that integrates clinical data from across disparate systems and manages the wide variety of clinical records, document types and terminologies pervasive in today's healthcare system. Building upon the highly flexible infrastructure from GE's partner InterComponentWare (Wayne, Pennsylvania), the eHealth Solutions platform contains features that help assist providers in managing patient consents and privacy controls, provider notifications and security, the company said.

“Better and more complete patient information at the point of care helps doctors and nurses make better care decisions with fewer medical errors,“ Wanchoo said. “Our platform securely delivers complete longitudinal, cross-community patient records for care providers, and integrates directly into clinical workflows.“

Sitting on top of the platform are applications such as the eHealth Clinical Portal and eHealth Patient Health Manager (PHM), GE said. According to the company, the eHealth Clinical Portal provides clear visibility into aggregated data from the HIE for the care provider. The eHealth PHM is a web-based tool for patient engagement. With a PHM, patients can access their clinical data, record data points such as weight, glucose levels and blood pressure readings, and then share this information with their medical team or family members through controlled data access, the company noted.

In other news from HIMSS:

•Merge Healthcare (Milwaukee) reported the release of its eFilm Mobile, a new extension of the company's eFilm Workstation franchise. This mobile device application provides users of eFilm Workstation v3.3 secure access to worklists and studies from their iPhone or iPod touch, Merge said, bringing many key components of medical imaging workflow to the palm of their hand.

Merge says its eFilm Mobile allows users to: connect their iPhone to multiple eFilm Workstations; allow multiple iPhone connections to eFilm Workstation; interact with and view worklists remotely and in real time; view images; and remotely control eFilm Workstation to have eFilm send studies to another DICOM device.

•TeleHealth Services (Raleigh, North Carolina) reported the availability of its updated TIGR Version 7 system. The company says the new interactive education system will provide patients with on-demand access to condition-specific patient education care plans. Additional functionality with tests, surveys and automated service recovery adds a higher level of customization to the patient experience and allows the hospital to proactively address any patient challenges efficiently, the company noted. TIGR can also be used to provide education to staff members, from mandatory continuing education to quality reporting on national patient safety goals and other hospital initiatives.

The new version provides significant enhancements to the overall flexibility and performance of the interactive education solution, including a new television driven graphical interface, enhancing the patient usability. Additional features include improved adherence reporting, optional dietary interface, enhanced active directory security and dynamic marquees that provide informational applications and expanded branding opportunities for hospitals.

•Dolbey (Concord, Ohio) unveiled the latest version of its Fusion CAC computer-assisted coding software. According to the company, Fusion CAC uses unique technology in a natural language processing software engine that can read charts to present appropriate ICD9-CM diagnostic, procedure and CPT codes.

Dolbey noted that the version 4.0 release of Fusion CAC includes exclusive, new features such as Running DRG Analysis, Charge Master Integration, Scanned Document Annotation with Manipulation, Automated Supervisor Code Audit Flagging and Enhanced Hybrid Medical Record Processing.

•Quest Diagnostics (Madison, New Jersey) introduced Care360 EHR (electronic health record), the next evolution of its Carre360 platform. The web-based solution enables physicians to “simply embrace the benefits of digital healthcare without large capital costs or disruption to office workflow,“ Quest said.

Care360 EHR is based on a modular architecture, allowing physicians to incrementally adopt new functionality at their own pace, according to Quest. Physician practices can transition from paper to electronic records over time, starting with Care360 Labs & Meds, with the option of Care360 ePrescribing, then moving to Care360 EHR when the practice is ready.

Upgrading from one solution to the next is as simple as activating the additional modules, and scheduling training at a convenient time, the company said. Physicians can access secure patient information anywhere, anytime and from any Internet browser, and can view lab results and medical history as well as ePrescribe from their Apple iPhone or iPod touch, Quest said.