Entries by admin

Welcome to the Blog!

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In recent weeks, Health Monitoring Systems has been fielding a lot of questions regarding meaningful use from both hospitals and public health departments.  And, we have been doing a lot of digging, too.  While we aren’t the experts, we thought it would be useful to share the information we have and our views.

And so, we created this blog.

The purpose of the blog is to provide both resources and opinion regarding trends in healthcare related to healthcare data exchange (its what we do!).  Meaningful Use affects both of the HMS products MediCenter and EpiCenter.

EpiCenter collects and analyzes healthcare data, providing a view into regional health conditions for public health and healthcare.  MediCenter reverses the flow and provides patient medication history to clinicians at the point of care.  With all of the activity around meaningful use and health information exchange, it is safe to say we are heavily invested in this area.

Please participate by registering on the site and leaving comments.  We turned on registration, not to harvest email addresses but to prevent SPAM comments.

If you have some thoughts on these topics, please drop me a line at editor@hmsinc.com.  We are actively seeking guest bloggers to provide their opinions and insights.

Once again, welcome to the blog.

— kjh

Use of syndromic ILI surveillance as a proxy for influenza sentinel surveillance

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Salt Lake Valley Health Department (SLVHD) uses syndromic surveillance to monitor influenza-like illness (ILI) activity as part of a comprehensive influenza surveillance program.  During the 2009 spring and fall waves of novel H1N1 influenza, sentinel surveillance became increasingly burdensome for both community clinics and SLVHD.  Given that syndromic surveillance is more efficient and less error-prone, […]

95% accuracy in 37 seconds

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Summary Health Monitoring Systems conducted a pilot study of the MediCenter medication reconciliation system that showed improved medication list accuracy, increased nursing efficiency, and demonstrated clinical significance while offering a potential return on investment of $300,000. Pilot Study Numerous healthcare quality organizations have identified medication administration as an area of improvement for patient safety. The […]

Bioterrorism, pandemics spur security devices’ development

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Sunday, February 28, 2010By Debra Erdley, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Nearly a decade after it kicked into high gear with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the race to develop reliable ways to detect and identify biological and chemical threats is bearing fruit for Pittsburgh entrepreneurs.

Technical

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MediCenter’s straight-forward design makes it simple for hospitals to get going.  Our project management team has an easy-to-follow checklist of items for hospitals to review.  These items include operational aspects that ensure administrative, legal, and clinical issues are addressed.  The IT implementation of the MediCenter service is straightforward as well.  In less than a week, Health […]

Background

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In 2008, Health Monitoring Systems had connected its 300th hosptial to the EpiCenter System.  At the time, this was the largest health information exchange in the country.  While explaining this milestone to Kimberly Lyons-Neel, a hospital executive, lightening struck.  Ms. Lyons-Neel immediately grasped the significance of Health Monitoring Systems’ large health information exchange.  “You know […]

Return on Investment

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MediCenter improves medication list accuracy, increases nursing efficiency, and demonstrates clinical significance. The end result is an improvement in operating costs of about $300,000. Improvement in operating costs is due to reductions in nursing time and adverse drug event rate. Hospitals are inherently complex. As a reference, a 250 bed facility with 40,000 emergency department […]