I came across a great blog called Cloud Computing’s Stormy Future this morning by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown. John and John are co-chairmen of the Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge, and have written several books focused on technology and innovation. Their post talks about the disruptive potential of cloud computing and outlines four distinctive,…
At least 70% of data in the EMR originates in the lab. Several sources can be sited with this interesting statistic. We see articles, blog posts, and tweets daily about how EHR adoption is increasing and going to continue to build steam. I don’t believe you can overstate the importance of the lab in this tidal…
The article Good News for Anatomic Pathology Laboratories: Tissue-Based Diagnostics Market Predicted to Double by 2016 published this morning by Dark Daily, is another indicator that the Anatomic Pathology market is going to see increased volumes. Couple this with health care reform that may have an adverse affect on lab reimbursements, EFFICIENCY will be key in surviving and thriving during this…
A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (a member of the Roche Group) would acquire BioImagene for $100+ Million. BioImagene is a leader in the field of digital pathology and workflow analysis. Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to visit for a few minutes with some members of the BioImagene team including…
Even though the movement of health data is becoming more digitized and shared electronically, one of the main distribution channels for lab results is still the classic faxsimile. The reality for many labs is that this is how most lab results are communicated to referring physicians. Conversations with pathology labs around the country reveal issues with faxing reports,…
Came across this post and video about how HL7 works on Twitter by @HL7 and really enjoyed the simplicity of it. What’s interesting though is that HL7 doesn’t seem to be simple at all. Please know I’m not saying HL7 isn’t a good thing, because standardization can add to progression. Also, I’m a business guy and need to leave the details to…
There is an abundance of focus and energy around the shift to digitizing healthcare. The government may be the biggest cheerleader and/or bank roller. Last week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT posted on its Health IT Buzz Blog a new theme of unity in healthcare emphasizing the fact that it is going to be a huge…
Several years ago I worked for a national lab. Our company’s individual AP labs of different sizes and specialties were sprinkled from coast to coast. The network functioned with each lab maintaining a considerable amount of autonomy and labs’ LIS systems ranged from antiquated to new and shiny and from home-brew DOS-based to the latest…
Today almost every pathology lab director has “interfacing” as a line item on their weekly staff meeting agenda. As more referring physicians implement EMR systems and ramp up their meaningful use (MU) of these technologies to grab their piece of the Federal Government’s HITECH incentive dollars, the demand for LIS-to-EMR interfacing increases. Check out a previous post describing the…
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model has been in existence for many years and continues to successfully prove out its value proposition compared to traditional legacy software system models. We published a post a few months ago on the total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits of SaaS. The healthcare industry was slower initially in its adoption of…