News 01/04/05

"David Downunder" suggests that the Kodak job ad I mentioned before relates to integration of their imaging systems with HIS software from Australian partner IBA Health, "Australia's largest eHealth company." They showed product at RSNA. At one time, Fuji seemed headed in this direction too, but I haven't heard anything lately.

"David" checked in via the Rumor Report form to your lower right, and so can you (anonymously, if you like.) Plop your name in the Mailing List box to your right for instant e-mail updates when I post, and don't forget the full-text Search function right below it. And, send me your job listings or job desires and I'll post them free on the jobs page.

Oracle wastes no time in canning PeopleSoft brass. Hopefully they got some of the obnoxious ones I've dealt with over the years.

Medical technology vendor Delphi Medical Systems signs a deal with Caretools to develop and sell PDA systems that control medical devices, such as infusion pumps and monitors. Great idea.

Kodak sells AuntMinnie.com to marketing firm IMV. If I was drawing up my ideal job or business, coming up with AuntMinnie.com might have been it (and may have been for founder Phillip Berman, MD, at least until Kodak took over and he left, now apparently at Protein Polymer Technologies.)

CIO Salary of the Week: Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD: $373,000.

Former Superior Consultant CFO/EVP Michael Puntoriero gets on the board of sunglass maker Oakey, but keeps his day job at camper maker Fleetwood.

Another "hospitals ought to get robots and fire people" article.

A few UK physicians are boycotting the government's new electronic medical record system, which is going live today, over privacy concerns. Patient records could originally be viewed and changed only by doctors delivering care, but access has been opened up to many groups. This doesn't sound like the Cerner scheduling system that had the same complaints, but it isn't clear in the article.

Idiotic hospital lawsuit of the week: this time brought by supporters of a hospital, LA's notorious Martin Luther King Jr/Drew Medical Center, created in 1965 to appease Watts rioters and known since as disaster in every category. Upset by an unflattering Los Angeles Times series featuring patients and families alleging poor care, the "Friends of King Drew" filed a HIPAA complaint with HHS against the newspaper and the county, saying the patient information was confidential. The "Friends" are demanding a retraction and threatening to sue. Would be it naive to assume that any legitimate complaint would have to come from the patients or families themselves? And with readily available cabs and buses, wouldn't you hightail it to another hospital even if you lived in Drew's parking lot?

Robot Story II: the new pharmacy one at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, paid for with $640,000 of your federal tax dollars for some reason, can't yet be used for its sole purpose: packaging individual patient injections. Robotic dosing is a cornerstone of the hospital's safety program (everything's drawn up custom in peds hospitals with a higher chance of error) but the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy wants more information from vendor ForHealth Technologies. Ohio's board has been kind of a pain for as long as I can remember, but maybe that's a good thing.

The English professor involved in designing the Da Vinci surgery robot has a new project. His "virtual chaperone" is a camera-and-microphone system controlled by both doctor and patient, used in situations that usually require a third person to be present. He's also working on a patient "black box" to record clinical data during surgery, much like those on aircraft.

OK, I've given this awards thing some minimal thought, so here's (tentatively) announcing the 2005 HISsies, the Brutally Honest Healthcare Information System Awards. You do the nominating and the voting while I just sit back and write about it, OK? Here's the plan (subject to change ... if you have ideas, let me know.) Nominations start next Friday, January 14, and end Tuesday, January 25. Voting begins Wednesday, January 26 and ends Wednesday, February 9. Winners will be announced in HIStalk on Thursday, February 10. Why the unusually precise timing? Because (a) I just thought it up, and (b) I'll make the announcement right before the HIMSS annual conference! Good idea, huh? It will give people something to talk about while trolling for free party invitations. So, here are the proposed HISies categories:

HIS Vendors
Smartest strategic move of 2004
Stupidest strategic move of 2004
Most impressive deal of 2004

Organizations
Best provider healthcare IT organization
Best HIS-related employer
Worst HIS-related employer
HIS-related company whose stock you’d bet the farm on

Technology
Most overrated technology
Most promising technology

News, Publications, and Conferences
Most valuable information source (OK, I'm trolling here ... deal with it)
Most memorable HIS-related advertisement
Biggest HIS-related news story of the year
Best conference attended
Most effective HIMSS annual conference exhibit of 2004
Most overused buzzword of 2004

Industry Figures
Most effective CIO in a healthcare provider organization
HIS industry figure with whom you’d most like to have a few beers
HIS industry figure in whose face you’d most like to throw a pie

An award must have at least two nominees progress to voting. No more than five nominees will be offered in each category, based on number of times nominated. Other than that, I'm winging it as a model of breezy "hey, we could put on a show" insouciance. Feel free to suggest a category. And if you're a big-bucks vendor who has a spare voice mail extension I could use to retrieve messages remotely, let me know. I have to put a contact number on a press release I'm thinking about doing and I don't want desperate reporters calling my nearly anonymous work or home phones directly. The voting site's going to cost me $20 and the vast HIStalk liquid reserves consist of a partially consumed Diet Pepsi.