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Health Monitoring Systems Named Pittsburgh Tech 50 Awards Finalist by Pittsburgh Technology Council

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[Pittsburgh, PA, August 11, 2015] – Pittsburgh’s Health Monitoring Systems, the country’s largest provider of population health surveillance data, has been chosen as an “Innovator of the Year” finalist in the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Tech 50 Awards. For nearly 20 years, the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s annual Tech 50 Awards have recognized southwestern Pennsylvania’s most successful, innovative, and thought-leading technology companies, […]

Syndromic Surveillance: Insights into Healthcare Policy

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Health Monitoring Systems is discovering that syndromic surveillance can also provide a rich source of information for public policy. Recently an American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) study found that ER physicians believe they are busier now than they were before implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. The study was covered in USA […]

Perspective: Foreign Travel Classification

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In the event of an outbreak, public health routinely strives to accurately identify all potential cases of disease. This process includes differentiating between the “worried well,” who may reference an infectious disease by name simply because it is receiving widespread media coverage, and patients who cite genuine causes for concern, like contact with an infected […]

Diagnosis Codes and Syndromic Surveillance

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The long-awaited ICD-10 compliance date of October 1, 2015 is fast approaching, and we’ve spoken with many concerned physicians and technical contacts at acute care facilities about how these changes may affect EpiCenter senders. EpiCenter has been capable of accepting ICD-10 codes since the initial ICD-10 compliance date of October 1, 2013, and over the […]

Welcome to EpiCenter 3.1

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EpiCenter 3.1 is now live. Along with several bug fixes, there’s some new functionality geared toward making medical and triage notes reports more easily navigable. When a cell in the report contains lengthy triage or observation notes, it was previously difficult to expand the window enough to be able to read the full text. Now, […]

Philadelphia-Bound: ISDS 2014

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Several HMS staff members are headed to Philadelphia next week for the 2014 ISDS Conference. You can hear from us at the following talks: Impact of Demographics on Healthcare Utilization Who: Dr. Andrew Walsh Where: Columbus Ballroom C When: 10:30am to 10:50am on Wednesday December 10th*

Big Changes in EpiCenter 3.0

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As we’ve mentioned previously, the Health Monitoring Systems team has been hard at work on incorporating extensible data types into EpiCenter. These extensible data types include Triage Notes and Observations. Now that EpiCenter 3.0 has been released, we’re excited to share these new enhancements with our users.

The Future is Now

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“In a recent article on Venturebeat.com, an online publication covering tech news, Bryan Sivak, CTO of the Department of Health and Human Services, was quoted as saying: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the CDC could be immediately alerted if a patient showed up at a clinic somewhere with a temperature of 104 degrees, and who […]

Ebola Surveillance: Beyond the Chief Complaint

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Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan visited the emergency department of a Dallas Hospital with a temperature of 100.1 degrees Fahrenheit, abdominal pain, decreased urination, and a sharp headache. He was sent home with antibiotics because it was not disclosed to the doctors on staff that Duncan had recently traveled from Liberia, where the disease has […]

Visualizing the Cost of Health Care

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We’ve written a lot about health care spending in the US, and about the ways we could lower costs and improve outcomes. This nicely-designed widget from the Institute of Medicine creates  visualizations that further clarify the exorbitant costs of healthcare in the US, and also provides information on lowering costs and improving outcomes. Take a […]