Middle East Healthcare News » medical software

Global Market Report for Electronic Medical Record Systems

ICTFH — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:27:59 +0000

Research and Markets announced the addition of the “Electronic Medical Record Systems – Global Strategic Business Report” report to their offering.

This report analyzes the North American And European markets for Electronic Medical Record Systems in US$ Million. Annual forecasts are provided for the period 2006 through 2015. The report profiles 74 companies including many key and niche players such as Agfa-Gevaert Ltd., Ascribe plc, Cambio Healthcare Systems, Cambio Healthcare Systems, CompuGROUP HOLDING AG, Computer Programs and Systems, Inc., EBIT AET S.p.A., Eclipsys Corporation, Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Epic Systems Corporation, GE Healthcare, Hewlett Packard Company, IBA Health (Europe) Ltd., IMS MAXIMS plc, Indra Sistemas SA, iSoft Group plc, McKesson Corporation, MDS Medical Software, MedPlus, Inc., Medical Information Technology, Inc., Medasys SA, Nexus AG, Noemalife SpA, Profdoc AB, QuadraMed Corporation, SAP (UK) Limited, Siemens Medical Solutions GSD GmbH, and System C Healthcare plc. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are mostly extracted from URL research and reported select online sources.

Please note: Reports are sold as single-site single-user licenses. The delivery time for hard copies is between 3-5 business days, as each hard copy is custom printed for the organization ordering it. Electronic versions require 24-48 hours as each copy is customized to the client with digital controls and custom watermarks.

Key Topics Covered:

I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & PRODUCT DEFINITIONS

II. A NORTH AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN MARKET REPORT 1. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW 2. PRODUCT OVERVIEW 3. REGIONAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE 4. PRODUCT INNOVATIONS/INTRODUCTIONS 5. RECENT INDUSTRY ACTIVITY 6. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS

III. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Total Companies Profiled: 106 (including Divisions/Subsidiaries – 110)

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Gulf SAFE Launches Implementation Phase

ICTFH — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:06:47 +0000

A meeting was held yesterday to launch the implementation phase of the first Gulf ‘Survey of Atrial Fibrillation Events’, also known as GULF SAFE, an initiative set-up by the Gulf Heart Association (GHA) in partnership with Sanofi-aventis Gulf to understand, manage, and establish the approximate prevalence of the cardiac disease in the region.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm. It involves the fibrillating or quivering of the heart muscles, instead of coordinated contractions.

The meeting at the InterContinental Hotel Festival City comes off the back of the recently concluded pilot phase, which was launched in May 2009 with the help and participation of five GCC countries, with the addition of Yemen. A number of top cardiologists and doctors from emergency departments across the GCC met yesterday to discuss the success of the pilot, which involved entering the records of 2,000 patients into a web database to create the necessary base-line data used for all future follow-ups.

“The pilot phase means that the base foundation of the survey has been set. We have never had any figures on the prevalence of this condition in this region, and now we have our foot in the door. The pilot phase served to check the readiness of more than 20 hospitals in 5 GCC countries plus Yemen to conduct the survey,” said Professor Mohammed Zubaid, Head of Cardiology Division, Mubarak Al Kabeer Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Kuwait University; and Principal Investigator of Gulf SAFE.

The next phase of GULF SAFE, started in November 2009 and will run to June 2010, is considered to be the implementation phase, in which findings taken from the pilot course and established during yesterday’s meeting will be put into action. Highly-regulated attendance procedures will ensure that all AF patients visiting the participating hospitals will be included in the electronic data base and will be followed up consistently throughout the course.

“Atrial fibrillation is usually asymptomatic and known to be one of the leading misdiagnosed cardiac conditions worldwide. We are very happy with the success of the pilot phase. We know that the disease incidence is high, but now with the distribution of our disease registry software across hospitals in the region, we will have an idea of the true burden of the disease in each country.” said Dr. Wael Almahmeed, Head of Emirates Cardiac Society and Head of Cardiology Department, Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

AF may result in palpitations, fainting, chest pain or congestive heart failure. People with AF usually have a significantly increased risk of stroke (up to 7 times that of the general population). The risk of developing AF increases with age, accounting for approximately 8% of people over the age of 80 years.

“Gulf SAFE is the first ever multinational registry of this common arrhythmia in the Middle East. It will help us understand the characteristics of patients with this condition in our region, how they are treated, and their outcomes. In doing so, we can identify areas that need improvement, and plan future research.” explained Dr. Alawi Alsheikh-Ali, Consultant Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist, Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

AF can be diagnosed either by taking a pulse and observing that the heartbeats don’t occur at regular intervals, or by conducting an electrocardiogram (ECG) which will indicate the absence of ‘P waves’ – waves that are normally present in regular heart beats.

“Sanofi-aventis has established a strategic partnership with the Gulf Heart Association with several previous successes in the field of cardiology, mainly the GULF RACE (Gulf Registry of Acute Coronary Events) and the production of more than five GHA guidelines for different indications in the cardiology practice,” concluded Dr. Hisham Mahmoud, Director Market Access & Medical Affairs, Sanofi-aventis, Gulf.

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Interview: EMRs in a Virtual Hospital

ICTFH — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:31:23 +0000

The Ann Myers Medical Center is a hospital in Second Life, the virtual world where we organize medical exercises and simulations. John Norris is more than interested in medical informatics and the opportunities provided by Second Life in medical education. That’s all you should know before reading the next interview with John Norris about his recent experiments to implement electronic medical records into the virtual hospital.

* You’ve recently had some kind of experiment in Second Life in the Ann Myers Medical Center. What did you exactly do?

Ann Myers Medical Center is a well done simulation of a hospital. I wanted to try to bring to it the possibility of using electronic medical records and clinical information systems within the simulation. The ability to practice with the software in a simulated environment would go a long way in understanding, and learning how it works.

The technique I used to bring the software to the simulation environment has been used by others in different areas, and is not very sophisticated, but opens up the idea for exploration. Basically, I used the SL client help window to access a website with an EMR/CIS application.

In the SL client go to the toolbar’s drop down “Help” then “In-World Help”. One can put ULRs into the search window and that webpage will be displayed within the help window. In this way, I accessed the open source medical software site ClearHealth and used their demo.

I did not create an object with SL. Other avatars cannot look over my shoulder to see what is happening. (Although they could have their own logins to the medical application and access the medical data that way.)

* Why do you think it could be useful in the medical simulations done in Second Life?

I think it can give a more fuller experience to medical simulations, incorporating medical records, scheduling, and the like while in SL.

* What do we need to use this tool?

The SL Client allows one in a round about way, to access the web. You could do the same with a separate web browser.

More importantly you need access to medical software. I recommend Open Source Medical software as it is much easier to access. Some sites have full demos online, like ClearHealth. Other sites provide Live CD’s to download, boot up from, and set up locally. One does not have to worry about licenses, nor accessing servers with real medical data within them.

* What are your future plans? Do you plan to take part in a medical exercise in the AMMC and implement it into the process?

The folks at AMMC have expressed interest in it. I have not been involved in their projects directly, so I do not know if this easily works into their current activities. I would be more than happy to help them set this up, but it is pretty simple once you give it a try. I’d love to know if folks do use it, and it would be fun to see it during a simulation.

As a proof of concept, what I did is pretty much done. I might try some different applications to see how they might look, it would be neat to access a PACS. Once/if there is HTML on a prim, or other easy ways to access the web in-world, then that will open up a lot more possibilities.

My current SL project is writing up a SL notecard to help introduce medical professionals to the variety of healthcare interests within Second Life. I will continue traveling Second Life as a healthcare tourist, checking out the latest and visiting friends.

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Flexible Radiology PACS

ICTFH — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:35:16 +0000

It is a great time for small and medium-sized medical centers, imaging centers, veterinary and dental offices, podiatry and chiropractic offices, hospitals and radiology departments to select a Radiology PACS that is right for your facility. Dicom Solutions, a medical imaging distributor and systems integrator, offers a wide range of different Radiology PACS as well as ris pacs suitable for your medical office. There are many benefits that come from using digital images, but perhaps the greatest is the flexibility that digital imaging can offer your medical team.

Radiology PACS is short for Picture Archival and Communication Systems, and it is a medical software. It allows an ordinary personal computer to be able to read, send, receive and archive medical digital images, using the World Wide Web as the conduit for communications. Ris pacs refers to a Radiology Information System, which allows you to create patient records, schedule appointments, and bill for services. Combining the digital images with the patient data makes for a completely digital organization of all of your important patient information.

Initially, Radiology PACS were only used by large hospitals because the cost was too prohibitive for smaller facilities. Thankfully, that is now a thing of the past, because you can select a system sized to the number of personnel and specific needs suitable for your medical office. Systems are also easily expandable to take care of current usage levels as well as anticipate future growth.

Another major benefit that comes from using digital imaging software is the ability to easily archive patient records and also create back ups. Compliance with HIPPA regulations mandates archiving records for several years. Disaster recovery is also important as part of your emergency preparation, and by using Radiology PACS you have a great deal of flexibility in how you archive. You can save information to CDs and DVDs, for example. You can choose to use a RAID array to save data to multiple hard drives. You can also perform routine back ups of your information at an off-site server, which protects you if disaster strikes.

Smaller facilities benefit from web-based Mini-PACS available from Dicom Solutions. A mini-pacs is a fully self-contained unit that functions like a full enterprise pacs system but on a smaller scale. At less than $5,000 to get set up, this offers the flexibility and cost effectiveness that smaller imaging, chiropractic and orthopedic centers need.

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