Academic Freedom and ED EHR's Down Under: An Update
At the post "Academic Freedom Curtailed?" I wrote:The essay on Emergency Department electronic health record (EHR) problems in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) by medical informatics professor Dr. Jon Patrick, Health Information Technologies Research Laboratory (HITRL), University of Sydney, that I referenced in my posts "The Story of the Deployment of an ED Clinical Information System ‐ Systemic Failure or Bad Luck" and "

Is Someone at Jefferson Regional Medical Center Lying About EHR Safety?
This curious story appeared about apparent clinician health IT safety concerns at Jefferson Regional Medical Center near Pittsburgh:Switch to electronic records alarms Jefferson Regional physiciansBy Walter F. Roche Jr.PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEWFriday, October 30, 2009Jefferson Regional Medical Center's attempts to convert to electronic medical records have some doctors concerned about patient safety. In a memo issued this month, the hospital's Health Informa

2009 a Pivotal Year in Healthcare IT
2009 is proving to be a pivotal year in healthcare IT. Recent authoritative articles and reports on health IT problems largely validate the issues presented at this blog and others focusing on health IT issues, and at my academic website on HIT difficulties started over a decade ago, in 1998, freely available to the industry.These articles and reports have ultimately led to a U.S. Senate investigation of the healthcare IT industry initiated in Oct. 2009 (link below).2009 may be the year that healthcare IT vendors will finally begin to underst

Did a Yakuza Boss Pay "A Million Dollars for One Liver?"
One of the more bizarre stories to appear on Health Care Renewal just resurfaced.  To summarize, in June, 2008, we posted about the strange case of four Japanese men, allegedly affiliated with Yakuza criminal organizations, who received liver transplants from the UCLA Medical Center, apparently with some alacrity. All likely paid full list prices for their procedures, and two later donated $100,000 each to the medical center. The case raised concerns by several notables (including Senator Charles Grassley, and Professor Arthur Caplan) about the integrity of the transplant system. Presu

A Bridge in Brooklyn and an Electronic Medical Records Bargain: Only One Hundred Nineteen Million D
One of the favorite debates people involved in IT seem to like to have is over the meaning of "failure" of IT projects.Merriam-Webster dictionary:Main Entry: fail·urePronunciation: \ˈfāl-yər\Function: noun Etymology: alteration of earlier failer, from Anglo-French, from Old French faillir to failDate: 1643 1 a : omission of occurrence or performance; specifically : a failing to perfo