News 03/28/07

From zzsiemensemployee: "Re: FDBE signs up with Map of Medicine and Soarian." That's First DataBank Europe, which will provide clinical decision support content to Siemens in Europe just like their US operation does here. I hadn't heard of Map of Medicine, now owned by Informa - it's an evidence-based medicine tool that looks pretty cool, actually.

From zzzsiemens: "Re: Soarian. Soarian didn't have zero sales in 2006 because salespeople are in Malvern instead of hitting the road. It's because the poor sales guys have nothing to sell. Just ask them to show you working code in a real hospital environment instead of slideware, then come back and give your readers your unbiased impression." I only know one hospital first-hand that tried to implement Soarian and it got yanked. I'll take that challenge, though - if you work for a hospital that is running Soarian in production right now, let me know. I've heard the "slideware" stuff for years and would be interested in some unvarnished truth myself.

From Puget Sound EMR: "Re: Bruce Greenstein. I noticed at HIMSS that Bruce Greenstein is listed as the Senior Director, Worldwide Health Microsoft. Is this the same Bruce Greenstein who was or is VP of healthcare for CNSI in Rockville, Md? It says he was with CMS and then GAO. Same guy, I wonder?"

From Curious: "Re: CHS. News on CHS' acquisition of Triad seems light. Does HIStalk cater primarily to not-for-profit healthcare?" Generally, I would say, only because that includes most of the hospitals and the IT news. If a story isn't directly IT-related, I'll usually leave it to more general healthcare blogs to cover since I don't have much value to add, so the Triad thing didn't hit my radar very hard. I have enough problems trying to keep up with IT stuff. I need contributors who can help me cover all the areas everyone wants covered!

From Anonymous: "Re: EMRs. In my area, Epic and Cerner each have a big customer and their systems won't exchange information. What regions of the country have the largest base of EMRs at different healthcare systems that do actually talk to one another? At least for medication reconciliation, labs, test results, pharma, etc." Interesting question in the RHIO era. The floor is open.

My new pal Amy has made a few minor improvements to the HIStalk layout that I like a lot. I asked her to highlight links underlines so they stand out better (which I could never get to work, even in the old format, because I'm CSS illiterate.) She even put a cool little HIStalk logo at the beginning of each article to make it easier to separate each posting when you're reading. I'm not sure there's much left to do, so it's good to be back in a routine again. I know not everyone likes the new format (some of whom didn't like the old one either) but I think it's pretty good.

And speaking of which: I'll be expanding things shortly. A vocal minority of readers would like me to post in more traditional blog format, with one story per posting and reader comments tied to that particular posting. I know most of you prefer the "everything in one posting" format I've used from the beginning, but suddenly lightning struck: I really could do both fairly easily, plus have a failover if the blog service goes down for some reason. I've got a couple of professionals working on some cool stuff. All in my plan for world domination, of course. And I really appreciate your input from the HIStalk Reader Survey, which is still open and ready for your wise counsel. I'm not even waiting for it to be finished before taking some advice from it.

I placed a new poll to your right: are you interested in Virtual HIMSS? I kind of am, to be honest, although I can barely pay attention at the real thing and I really struggle when listening in on Webexes.

I need to make one mention. Someone in my survey complained that HIStalk is not searchable. It is - the Google Search box to your upper right defaults to searching just HIStalk and its 699 articles going back to June 2003 (a fourth birthday is coming soon!) Also, a survey respondent suggested dropping my $100 subscription fee, so I'm really not sure what that was about since there isn't one. Every bit of HIStalk is right here in the open for you to read and (hopefully) enjoy, just like it always has been.

Thanks to everyone who has donated to Sumter Regional Hospital. I am astounded, as usual, at the response from individuals, vendors, and sponsors. I admit that it warms my usually cold heart to see the support the hospital is getting here. I appreciate it. Someone asked if Sumter is not-for-profit and that's a "yes." That made me realize that your donations should be tax deductible. You have your HIStalk receipt, but I've asked the hospital if they can e-mail one directly to each donor just in case the IRS doesn't trust me.

Cerner gets some new UK imaging business from Atos Origin.

Parkland implements multi-campus VoIP networking from Avaya and Juniper Networks, giving remote sites better communications and allowing Parkland to run a centralized call center.

Interesting: a Mass General anesthesiologist tinkering around with an IV pump came up with what became the smart pump from Alaris, which now sells $700 million a year under Cardinal Health. But this is what caught my eye: "What Sims did is called user-driven innovation by Eric von Hippel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. Von Hippel is the leading advocate of the value of letting users of products modify them or improve them, because they may come up with changes that manufacturers never considered. He thinks that this could help companies develop products more quickly and inexpensively than with their internal design teams." Mentioned: computer game "mods" and Firefox add-ons. Do HIT software vendors offer chances do to that by writing open APIs, providing specs, and encouraging user development? Seems like a different way to attack the market. I see Dr. von Hippel's book can be downloaded from his site, as can some of his papers. Like John Glaser, he even wrote a bedtime story book for his daughter. That and the news that Britney Spears is worth $100 million makes me feel like such a loser. Everybody's doing fun stuff.

The Utah Medical Association will make EMR/PM from eClinicalWorks available to its members.

A big deal for ED vendor Emergisoft: LSU will implement its EDIS in its eight EDs.

I hadn't heard that Texas Tech's medical school is implementing an ASP version of VistA, with the help of integrator DSS, Inc. of Juno Beach, FL.

Thanks for: the Sumter donations, completing the reader survey, and of course for reading. News, rumors, a bedtime story for me: e-mail me.