The March 31 issue of The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland newspaper, published an article describing early patient experiences at the Cleveland Clinic with Microsoft HealthVault. Patients with chronic conditions, such as hypertension, take regular measurements that are sent to to Cleveland Clinic’s EHR system via HealthVault. Doctors at the clinic can monitor the results and adjust the patient’s treatment as needed. The article gives a real-world example and includes a video. See http://tinyurl.com/dk9uj3 for the original article, and http://tinyurl.com/c49qzs for some interesting commentary about the article.

The International Journal of Medical Informatics has published an article entitled “The State and Profile of Open Source Projects in Health and Medical Informatics.” The study reviewed open source projects listed in the open source database SourceForge. The article concluded, “A wide range of OSS applications are in development, from bio-informatics to hospital information systems. A profile of OSS in health and medical informatics emerges that is distinct and unique to the health care field. Future research can focus on OSS acceptance and diffusion and impact on cost, efficiency and quality of health care.” Find a summary of the article at http://tinyurl.com/cezabw. [SD]

A new study detailing the use of electronic health records was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 25. The study showed a very low level of adoption of EHR’s in U.S. hospitals. You can read the paper here, and listen to an NPR interview with the paper’s author here.

The Department of Health and Human Services is making $268 Million in Recovery Act funding available to support hospitals. Eligible hospitals are those that serve a disproportionate share of low-income or uninsured individuals and are known as Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH). States receive an annual allotment to make payments to DSH hospitals to account for higher costs associated with treating uninsured and low-income patients. This annual allotment is calculated by law and includes requirements to ensure that the DSH payments to hospitals are not higher than the actual costs incurred by the hospital to provide the uncompensated care. The Recovery Act increases the amount of allotments available to states from approximately $11.06 billion to $11.33 billion for 2009. You will find a list of hospitals on the state’s health services sites: Arizona, California, and Nevada. Hawaii is not slate for an increase in DSH funding for 2009.

[From HHS press release dated March 20, 2009]

March 27, 2009, is the deadline for qualified libraries to sign up for the Nature Publishing Group e-licensing opportunity. Libraries in non-profit California hospitals are eligible for this offer. A copy of the offer is available from Julie Kwan.

Alison Aldrich, Technology Coordinator for the NN/LM Pacific Northwest Region, wrote an interesting blog post called, “(Fire)Wallflowers Invited to Dance?” She presents some evidence that firewall rules against Web 2.0 tools (such as blogs, wikis, etc.) are beginning to relax a bit at hospital libraries. Her blog post is available at: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/dragonfly/2009/01/27/firewallflowers/

Well worth reading! Note also the comment below the blog post.

Are you interested in learning about electronic health records? The NN/LM Pacific Northwest Region held an Electronic Health Record Forum in October of 2008. The purpose of the forum was to “ensure that health sciences librarians are an integral and important part of the electronic health records (EHR) team in healthcare organizations.” Speakers included several medical informatics experts.

The forum audio was recorded, and you can access it as well as notes and resources from this page:

http://nnlm.gov/pnr/advocacy/ehr-forum.html