Dear Healthcare IT Insider,
As you are certainly aware, the healthcare profession and the industries that support it are increasingly focused on healthcare IT. Take a look at what's been published on the topic in the past several weeks.
There are many ambitious projects occurring around the world, including one in Australia: the implementation of a complex health information exchange and enterprise imaging repository for the state of New South Wales. This is the subject of our Insider Exclusive, which you can access before the rest of our AuntMinnie.com members.
Also impressive is the way IT is used to manage a province-wide quality assurance (QA) program in British Columbia for prostate cancer patients receiving brachytherapy. The authors wrote their article, which we summarize here, as a reaction to the QA issues of the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs program several years ago.
You can also read about the make-do ingenuity of radiology staff in Taiwan, who developed RIS-like workflow improvement software for ultrasound exams that pleased patients and sonographers alike. In addition, Canadian researchers are developing open-source software for breast cancer management, described in an article by contributing writer Rosemary Frei.
And if you overlooked senior editor Erik L. Ridley's profile of Scannerside, a startup firm with a Web-based radiation dose exposure tracking tool, click here to read all about it.
Probably most important to the Healthcare IT Digital Community is the announcement of the final rule for stage 2 meaningful use criteria, which Erik Ridley explains here. The U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has created a new Web page to provide more information, and the American College of Radiology has expressed its opinion of the final rule.
Finally, if you didn't have time last week to attend AuntMinnie.com's virtual conference, RADExpo 2012: The Cutting Edge of Imaging, you can still listen to several excellent presentations on healthcare IT.
