GE Healthcare is presenting a number of additions to its IT portfolio at this week's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual meeting in Orlando, FL.
With an eye on increasing mobile access to electronic medical records (EMRs), GE is previewing remote access to its EMR line from Apple's iPad and iPhone, including Centricity Advance and Centricity Practice Solution. GE is also offering a free iPad to new Centricity Advance customers in a promotion that runs through March.
In addition, the vendor is highlighting Centricity Imaging Mobile Access for PACS, which will allow Centricity PACS users to pull images and reports from an Apple or Android smartphone or tablet. Centricity Imaging Mobile Access for PACS is currently pending 510(k) clearance at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The vendor has also announced that two of its new EMR offerings -- Centricity Practice Solution 10 and Centricity Patient Online 12 -- have been certified for meaningful use under the U.S. government's IT stimulus program. In addition, GE said that Centricity Enterprise 6.9 and Centricity EMR 9.5 have also received certification.
In other GE HIMSS news, the company said that it's collaborating with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to explore the efficacy of actionable health alerts delivered instantly to a physician's EMR.
With these alerts, physicians enter data as they see a patient; the data are then deidentified, transmitted to an archive, and measured against a disease profile, according to GE. If a suitable match is found, the relevant alert is issued and appears on the doctor's EMR display.
The project will begin with a six-month prospective study to determine if alerts are triggered often enough or too often, and if doctors take the advice displayed within the alerts, according to GE. The study will utilize GE's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC) database, which holds more than 17 million deidentified patient records.
The Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services, with participation from the Chicago Department of Public Health, has collaborated to develop and implement a use case for the pilot program since 2009, GE said.
