Healthcare IT News - December 2008 - (Page 10)

10 Healthcare IT News ■ December 2008 recognition; standardized lexicons (RadLex); and structured reporting. There are more. But the point is that it has begun to play an increasingly important role in quality improvement. What is your best advice to beginning radiologists? Use all of the wonderful tools you’ve learned about and will learn about in practice. But do not fail to actively safeguard your interpersonal and communication skills and your overall profession- www.HealthcareITNews.com Becker Continued from page 9 alism in an increasingly complex medical imaging marketplace. What are you reading? I read the Washington Post and New York Times online everyday, a dozen medical journals, a slow but regular diet of fiction including historical fiction because of our (my wife’s and my) membership in a book club, and currently a book about Six Sigma and another about customer service. ■ More at healthcareITnews.com e connect: Becker 1208 BIllITer Continued from page 9 with new, highly specific cancer treatments. How important is information technology to radiology? Huge. Consider the following informatics tools that are increasingly vital to the present and future practice of radiology: computerized physician order entry (decision support tools); scheduling; PACS; quantitative algorithms for detection (CAD), lesion characterization (diagnosis), and response to therapy; voice ● are now being widely used to study all forms of cancer. Unfortunately, most of that new knowledge is not centrally available or linked to other important patient information. Because of the groundbreaking VM2M project, it is possible – for the first time – to identify truly comparable groups of patients and tumors. By doing so, physicians and cancer biologists are matching promising candidate gene targets making innOvatiOns accessiBle Powerful, memory-intensive data management and networking resources are required to store, organize, and retrieve this information. Data from just 100 patients could easily fill the hard drive on a typical PC, and a comparative analysis of that data could take a day or more. During the first phase of the VM2M project, the Ohio Supercomputer Center provided a secure repository and hosted the development platform that allowed us to prototype the research project’s concept. We are now poised to explore the next phase of development for VM2M by moving into a production-supported environment. Nationwide Children’s specialists have thus far identified a dozen genes that assist them with personalized treatment for neuroblastoma patients. The VM2M project, when fully implemented, will allow doctors here in Columbus and around the world to have a comprehensive knowledge of each patient’s tumor at their fingertips. They will be able to compare tissue samples and their specific genetic markers quickly and with great accuracy in order to help children and adults fight cancer with treatments that are the most appropriate. Continued federal and state support of research projects – such as VM2M – that seek to apply the power of the latest technologies to life’s most dire medical conditions can produce miraculous new options for doctors, parents, infants – everyone touched by cancer. Recently, this public support was greatly enhanced with passage of the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, authored by Congresswoman Pryce. Among other things, the bill authorizes $30 million annually over five years to hasten advancements in pediatric cancer research and creates a national database on childhood cancers to help researchers detect trends in the diseases. ■ More at healthcareITnews.com e connect: Billiter 1208 Panasonic recommends Windows Vista® Business. DISEASES ARE LEGALLY WE CANNOT SAY , AFRAID OF IT. The New Toughbook® H1. Fully-sealed for easy sanitization, the new Panasonic Toughbook H1 combines the legendary Toughbook ruggedness people expect with a lightweight, thoughtful design to produce the ultimate mobile clinical assistant. It has hot-swappable twin batteries for longer battery life, runs a full Windows® OS and can operate as both a touchscreen and a tablet PC. What’s more, the Toughbook H1 has multiple fully integrated features, like a camera, barcode scanner and fingerprint reader. The new Panasonic Toughbook H1, a disease’s worst enemy. panasonic.com/toughbook/healthcare 1.888.357.1311 ● THE RUGGED ORIGINAL. David Billiter is director of research Informatics core at nationwide children’s hospital in columbus, Ohio, one of the nation’s 10 largest children’s hospitals and pediatric research centers. Stan ahalt is executive director of the Ohio Supercomputer center, a technology initiative of the Ohio Board of regents that connects high performance computing, the nation’s foremost state-of-the-art research network, and a deep pool of expertise dedicated to advancing research in the public and private sectors. e ● connect: paNasoNic 1208 Intel, Intel logo, Intel Centrino, Intel Centrino logo, Intel Inside, Intel Inside logo and Pentium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Toughbook notebook PCs are covered by a 3-year limited warranty, parts and labor. To view the full text of the warranty, log on to panasonic.com/business/toughbook/support.asp. Please consult your Panasonic representative prior to purchase. ©2008 Panasonic Corporation of North America. All rights reserved. Afraid_HC_FY08-5 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10523 http://www.panasonic.com/toughbook/healthcare http://www.panasonic.com/toughbook/healthcare http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10522 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=10572 http://panasonic.com/business/toughbook/support.asp

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - December 2008

Healthcare IT News - December 2008 Contents AHIC 2.0 Debuts See How It Works Monitored to Health Right Decisions Neurologist Needed HiMSS Insider: Four to the Board Heartened Generation Next Clinical Toolkit: Inpatient EMRs Management Solutions: Asset Tracking

Healthcare IT News - December 2008

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