Digital Government

VHA to consolidate vets’ health data

The initiative requires the agency to standardize data that has been entered in text form in the past, often with misspellings and nonstandard abbreviations.

Digital Government

California, Blue Cross to implement telemedicine

About 90,000 members of the California Public Employees' Retirement System who live in rural areas will be able to receive medical advice via a network.

Digital Government

Volunteer GIS group aids medical mission

Fifty mapping experts will donate time and equipment to gather data that can help improve services to the poor in developing countries.

Digital Government

USAID to award AIDS drug supply chain contract

The U.S. Agency for International Development will soon award a multimillion-dollar contract to develop a global supply chain management system for AIDS drugs.

Digital Government

Fewer than half of California's counties have EHR projects

Only 26 of the state's 58 counties are working to exchange electronic health records across disparate information systems.

People

Drug data for Katrina evacuees now online

Prescription medicine data for evacuees fleeing Hurricane Katrina’s devastation is now available on a single Web site.

Digital Government

VistA-Office is released -- sort of

CMS makes open-source-based e-records software available for evaluation as part of limited release.

People

Military Health System appoints CIO

Retired Army colonel spent 26 years in Army Medical Service Corps.

People

Gingrich: 'Paper kills,' electronic medical records save lives

Katrina has shown beyond doubt the necessity of moving to electronic records, policy figures argue.

Digital Government

Marchibroda: E-health work keeps pace

The recent Health IT Summit showed that progress is happening on many fronts.

People

Lockheed Martin gets Social Security purchase agreement

SSA has awarded a five-year blanket purchase agreement worth as much as $124 million for information technology services, including medical document scanning.

People

Brailer: Health IT vision takes shape

After responding to the crisis following Hurricane Katrina, the national health IT coordinator sees more opportunity to drive technology use.

Digital Government

Rand pegs health IT savings at $81B a year

Think tank report encourages the federal government to do more to accelerate the adoption of such technology.

Digital Government

Survey: EHR a tough sell

Small and midsize practices are especially skeptical about the value of electronic health record systems.

Digital Government

Leavitt names advisory board members

The commissioners represent various segments of the health care industry, those who pay for care and consumers.

People

Physicians' e-mails document post-Katrina horrors

Providing care in hurricane-battered areas was compounded by shortfalls in the National Disaster Medical System.

People

HHS gathers health data for Katrina evacuees

By next week, HHS officials hope to make some elements of patients' medical records available to doctors treating people from the Gulf Coast.

Digital Government

Master index pitched as patient ID alternative

An index approach, along with probabilistic matching, would ensure that the index links to the correct set of records for each patient.

Digital Government

Open health records software comes of age

A nonprofit group hopes to spur even broader adoption of EHR software developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Digital Government

Editor's Letter: A community in flux

None