Dear AuntMinnie Member,
For all the attention being focused on communicating critical tests results, a new study finds referring physicians ignoring some of the alerts sent to them about important imaging findings.
Researchers from a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston studied how physicians handled alerts from an automated critical results notification system. They found that while the vast majority of alerts were acted upon, some alerts simply fell through the cracks and were ignored, according to a story we're featuring in our Healthcare IT Digital Community.
And in fact, some of these alerts carried important information about diagnostic findings, including cancer diagnoses. Learn more about the study by clicking here.
Mammo data breach
In other news, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are investigating how a hacker tapped into the school's computer network to access personal data for 236,000 women involved in a research study on mammography.
University officials estimate that the Social Security numbers of 163,000 study participants may have been accessed. To learn more, click here or visit our Healthcare IT Digital Community at healthcareit.auntminnie.com.
US contrast safety
Finally, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, found no link between the use of echocardiography contrast agents and an increased risk of death or myocardial infarction in a study of nearly 27,000 patients.
The research is the latest highlighting the safety profile of echo contrast, and it could help convince the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lift its black box warning on the products. Read more by clicking here, or visit our Ultrasound Digital Community at ultrasound.auntminnie.com.
