Monday Morning Update 9/10/07

From Inside View: “Re: Bronx Lebanon. Eclipsys won. Cerner, who everyone assumed was the winner a couple of months ago, was the surprise loser. But the biggest loser was GE. They should have won, could have won, but didn’t execute and their product is a mess. The rate at which GE is losing LastWord clients is alarming.” Unverified, I should mention. Thanks for the update.

From Abe Froman: “Re: Dubai. In Cerner’s presentation at the conference, they showed how CPOE cuts medication turnaround time from hours to 20 minutes. A hospital director there couldn’t understand how you can put the ordering process in the hands of a physician. What happens if he makes a mistake? In Dubai hospitals, pharmacists are simply glorified salesmen, dispensing whatever the order says. They do not question anything. The nurse provides the review when the order is transcribed, which doesn’t happen with CPOE. The conclusion was that Cerner doesn’t understand that market.”

I mentioned tee shirts that will be worn by former employees of a certain vendor at their “glad I’m out of there” reunion. Folks asked me to run a picture. If you want a look, see here and here.

I got an e-mail from Jason Maude, CEO of Isabel Healthcare, after I mentioned the press its diagnosis product receives. He recommends a book called Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. It has a healthcare chapter that covers IHI’s 10,000 Lives campaign and devotes five pages to Isabel. A quote: “House makes excellent drama, but it’s no way to run a health care system. I’ve suggested to my friend Lisa Sanders, who recommends script ideas for the series, that House should have an episode in which the protagonist vies against data-based diagnostics ala Kasparov vs. the IBM computer. Isabel’s Dr. Joseph Britto doesn’t think it would work. ‘Each episode would be five or seven minutes instead of an hour,’ he explains. ‘I could see Isabel working much better with Grey’s Anatomy or ER where they have to make a lot of decisions under a lot of time pressure.’ Only in fiction does man beat the machine.”

Researchers involved in the development of relational databases now say they’re obsolete and should be considered legacy technology. Reason: row-oriented databases are slower than column-oriented ones, especially for data warehouses. I thought the article might mention Cache’ since it doesn’t have those performance issues (remember they used to call it a “post-relational database”) but the guys quoted have already started their own company, so they’re not likely to bring up competitors.

In the UK, Cerner suspends work on the new Millennium R2 release intended for the London and South trusts.

Check out the new SCI Solutions ad to your left. Kind of a cross between the old Batman and Austin Powers.

Computers stolen from a McKesson office in July contained the personal information of thousands of patients who had signed up for prescription assistance programs from drug companies. The company said it’s “not clear” whether the data was encrypted, which is a nice way of saying it wasn’t (few users encrypt their data).

MPI vendor Initiate Systems signs a deal with Capgemini UK for a children’s services application.

A VIASYS engineer has been charged with hacking the computer system of his employer in 2003. He started by deleting files of his EEG development coworkers, then went after the executives. He was finally caught by an outside firm who located the outdated computer he used along with its hard drive, which he kept locked in a desk drawer.

A UK hospital bans employee access to Facebook after heavy use degrades its network.

The latest issue of The White Stone Group’s newsletter is out (warning: PDF). They run a contest to see which hospital has overturned the largest single denial using their TRACE tracker and workflow software. The winner: a Georgia hospital recovered $452,000 when they showed documentation of precertification notification and response. Even more interesting was the “Taste of Trace” recipe for cheese grits souffle, which of course is the food of the gods for Southerners. If Mrs. HIStalk could cook, I’d dispatch her to the kitchen to whip up a batch, albeit using Velveeta instead of fancy cheddar.

The Northwest Medical Information Symposium will be held on September 13-14 in Spokane, WA. Speakers: Gingrich, Leavitt, and Frisse, among others. Meditech is even on board as an uncommon sponsor since the meeting is put on by its customer, Inland Northwest Health Services.

An investment analyst surveys US users of its Emdeon system and “… believes that concerns about falling demand from medical practices and possible glitches in the software are overdone. However, it said that it had uncovered evidence that the group, whose core business is accounting software for small firms, had made only mediocre efforts to market its medical software.”

Throughput software vendor Premise Corporation announces events from the first half of the year: client based doubled, 100% “would buy again” results from KLAS, 100% employee growth, new financing, and new operational and board leadership.

A mother sues the makers of Tylenol #3 when her newborn baby dies, apparently poisoned by the her codeine-containing breast milk. If your hospital flags breastfeeding moms and successfully issues CPOE or pharmacy lactation precautions for specific drugs, it would be the first I’ve seen. Tylenol #3 probably wouldn’t be on the list anyway since it’s not a common problem. FDA issued a warning last month.

I’m moving on to Brev+IT from here, so if you pounced on this e-mail notification, you might have time to sign up before I send it out.

E-mail me. How hard can it be?