Vendor Notebook: MedPlus solution enhances interoperability

MedPlus, the healthcare information technology subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics, has announced the general availability of its next release of Care360 EHR solution designed to significantly enhance the interoperability of Care360 EHR by supporting the Direct Project specifications, which were established by the Direct Project under the coordination of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Inclusion of the Direct Project specifications will enable physicians to more effectively exchange data with hospitals, patients, payers and other healthcare providers in a secure email format.

Shared Health and Health Language, Inc. (HLI) have announced a partnership that will use HLI’s Language Engine in Shared Health’s Web-based applications and products. This streamlined solution will help physicians, clinicians, patients and health systems demonstrate compliance with all three stages of meaningful use. Under the agreement, Shared Health will use HLI’s Language Engine within its health care applications to streamline the updating, mapping and distribution of standard controlled vocabularies and facilitate compliance with meaningful use regulations. 

eClinicalWorks has announced that suburban Chicago’s Riverside HealthCare will be offering eClinicalWorks comprehensive electronic health records (EHR) solution to its employed physicians. This solution includes eClinicalWorks unified electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management (PM) system, eClinicalWorks Electronic Health eXchange (eEHX), Enterprise Business Optimizer (eBO), eClinicalWorks Patient Portal, eClinicalWorks P2P, eClinicalMobile and eClinicalMessenger – all designed to extend the use of EHRs beyond the practice’s walls to improve communication with access to real-time information. athenahealth has announced its EHR service platform, athenaClinicals, has been selected by the West Virginia Regional Health Information Technology Extension Center (WVRHITEC) as a Five Star vendor in its EHR Vendor Recognition Program (VRP). WVRHITEC is a federally funded project to assist health care providers with electronic health record use and to prepare them to qualify for federal EHR incentive payments. The center’s VRP is designed to help connect health care providers interested in acquiring an EHR system with vendors who have met certain thresholds of clinical functionality and service developed by the WVRHITEC, as well as The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) requirements for providers to achieve meaningful use.

Siemens Healthcare has announced that five more U.S.-based healthcare institutions have contracted to implement Soarian Web-based health information systems (HIS) to help drive clinical and financial excellence through increased health IT adoption. They include Baptist St. Anthony's Health System in Amarillo, Texas; Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, N.Y.; Children's Hospital in New Orleans; and Maine General Health in Augusta and Waterville, Maine.

STAT DOCTORS has announced that Casa Grande Regional Medical Center (CGRMC) has contracted with Stat Health Services to offer the STAT DOCTORS eHealth service to its 3,000 employees and covered dependents. CGRMC, a 187-bed community hospital that serves as a base station to more than 12 Pinal County emergency service providers, is making the comprehensive eHealth service available to aid its employees in maintaining health.

RaySearch Laboratories has received two new orders for its RayStation treatment planning system. One order comes from a Canadian cancer care and research facility, which will use RayStation as a research tool for the development of a new treatment machine that combines a traditional linear accelerator with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner. The other comes from Clinique de Genolier in Switzerland. This clinic will primarily use RayStation for the clinical introduction of dose tracking, which is a tool that uses daily imaging data and advanced deformation algorithms to monitor the delivered radiation dose.

Viztek, has introduced a new Opal-Forwarder feature for PACS that automatically adjusts all patient demographic fields to DICOM standards on image files received from outside the enterprise. By using conditional rules, the Viztek software is able to identify and modify existing DICOM fields in non-standard image files to match Opal-RAD’s standard data fields. When using Opal-Forwarder with Opal-RAD PACS, compression allows for studies routing from any DICOM PACS vendor to Opal-RAD at a significantly faster rate. The Forwarder also features a high-level of encryption without VPN access, enhancing the security of the PACS.

Diversinet has announced that it is among the first companies to have its products certified under a new program of OATH, the initiative for Open AuTHentication, as OATH. Toronto-based Diversinet is the only company focused on mobile healthcare (mHealth) to achieve this distinction. Diversinet uses its MobiSecure platform to enable healthcare organizations to rapidly deploy HIPAA-compliant mHealth applications to anyone, anytime, anywhere, on mobile devices.

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GHX has been awarded a three-year sole-source agreement has been award by the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) for supply chain management solutions and consulting services. The agreement, which has two optional one-year renewal periods, became effective on January 1, 2011.

BRIT Systems and RelWare have announced a partnership agreement that will provide an integrated Web-based EHR/RIS/PACS solution to hospitals, imaging clinics and large group practices. Both BRIT’s RoentgenWorks PACS/RIS and RelWare’s ONC-Certified EXR EHR are modular in design and based on industry standards and the latest Web-based technologies – such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The joint offering allows a facility to purchase a system ONC certified for meaningful use that takes advantage of existing departmental systems while implementing and paying for only the modules they are required to use.

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems has announced that Memorial Medical Center in Neillsville, Wis., is the latest in a growing number of healthcare organizations to select NextGen Inpatient Clinicals, NextGen Inpatient Financials and NextGen Ambulatory EHR to create a seamless technology platform across its continuum of care.

BIO-key International and Lumidigm have partnered to provide a strong authentication solution for e-prescriptions at Genesis HealthCare System. Genesis HealthCare is utilizing BIO-key’s biometric identification software with Lumidigm fingerprint sensors so staff may quickly, conveniently and securely establish identity when ordering, verifying or administering medications as required by Ohio law.

Ingenious Med has announced that its solution is now available on the app store for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The application is being launched as part of the company’s presence at the Hospital Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference. The application enables Ingenious Med’s 9,000 users to access the charge and data capture platform virtually anywhere.

IQMax has announced the release of its healthcare dictation app for Android OS, IQSpeak, which integrates a physician’s patient schedule with the ability to dictate patient notes using any device supporting Android OS. IQSpeak enables physicians to dictate anywhere, anytime, eliminating the need to locate a “landline” telephone or dictation station to dictate patient notes. Physicians may use IQSpeak on a stand-alone basis, or as part of IQMax’s complete suite of healthcare applications.

McKesson has announced that Peninsula Regional Medical Center, the largest tertiary care facility in the Delmarva region has enlisted McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals to help caregivers dramatically reduce mortality rates caused by severe sepsis, the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Since October 2009, the 362-bed hospital has decreased sepsis-related mortalities by 37 percent. The medical center attributes technology and process change to saving 77 lives and exceeding goals set by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Surviving Sepsis Campaign.

Summit Healthcare has announced it has received the federal government's meaningful use stamp of approval on its Immunization Registry Interface. The designation officially deems the interface capable of enabling providers to qualify for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Tested and certified under the Drummond Group's Electronic Health Records Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB) program, the interface is 2011/2012 compliant in accordance with the criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Ancillary Care Solutions has announced it was chosen to provide therapy related assessment and training services to United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Central Arizona, a non-profit health and human service organization that has served children and adults with disabilities since 1952. ACS leverages its financial, operational and regulatory expertise to help healthcare organizations manage their therapy programs, ranging from the development and management of new programs to the expansion of existing programs and reinvigoration of underperforming programs.

Diversinet has released a significant upgrade to its MobiSecure platform, including support of additional mobile devices and introduction of more than 50 new features. The upgrade affects the recently renamed MobiSecure Publisher (formerly MobiSecure Wallet and MobiSecure Vault), which facilitates secure, two-way communications and convenient information storage and access, as well as MobiSecure SMS, a handset client that supports secure text-message-based communications. T-System has announced the launch of an advanced information technology solution, T SystemEV STAT, made possible in part through an exclusive agreement with Apogee Informatics Corporation. T SystemEV STAT represents a major expansion of T-System's automated emergency department offerings for hospitals and health systems. Already implemented in leading health institutions, the Web-based module aggregates real-time data intelligence to enable higher level decisions about patient flow, staffing and resources.