Category: Health Data

Martin Johnston writes in the New Zealand Herald: The Government wants to force private health services and funders to provide statistics, sparking patient-privacy objections and a demand for payment. The Public Health Bill extends the obligation to provide statistics requested by the Health Minister, which now rests with district health boards, to “any provider or…

Joanne Silberner writes on NPR: “There are Web sites that allow you to keep information about your medical treatment online, where you and your doctor can access it easily. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday asks if electronic medical records are the next big thing in health care. The answer?…

  Michael Dinan reports on TMCNet: A medical technology company announced today that implantable devices to measure data such as people’s heart rhythms could soon be used to send health records to doctors and databases. St. Jude Medical, Inc. is working with Microsoft Corp. Health Solutions Group to determine how data collected through devices such…

Forty-four businesses and organizations have signed a letter to Congress asking that legislation to mandate electronic prescribing for the Medicare program be approved. The letter was sent May 1 to leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce committees. “We urge you to actively support passage of…

Tony Collins reports in ComputerWeekly.com: The first NHS trusts to upload medical details to a national database as part of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT) were pressured for political reasons to push ahead quickly despite the immaturity of the technology, an independent report is set to reveal. A year-long study of the summary…

Amy Harmon reports in the New York Times: A bill that would prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes won final approval in Congress on Thursday by an overwhelming vote. Full stoy – NY Times