Dear Healthcare Informatics Insider,
Has your hospital adopted or are your physicians using social media? If so, or if your healthcare organization is contemplating taking the social plunge, you might be interested in the experiences and advice of radiologist Dr. Lorenzo Faggioni, who also advises the Italian Society of Medical Radiology (SIRM) on imaging informatics. Click here to read staff writer Rebekah Moan's enlightening interview.
Use of social media and mobile devices for clinical or patient information requires new security and privacy measures for patient data, as well as expanded training programs. Is your organization adequately prepared? We'd like to alert you to a newly published report expressing serious concerns from accounting and management consulting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper's Health Research Institute. While this focuses on U.S. hospitals, it raises issues that apply to all hospitals.
Speaking of concern, the death knell has unequivocally sounded for the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) National Programme for IT. Fortunately, imaging informatics was largely exempt from criticism, and some of the elements of the initiative will be retained. Learn the details here.
Speech recognition systems continue to make waves. A candid analysis revealed that radiology reports of women diagnosed with breast cancer or suspected of having it are eight times more likely to contain a major error when dictated this way and self-edited than when conventionally dictated and transcribed, according to a report by associate editor Kate Madden Yee.
But practice can make perfect, or at least can produce a reduction in mistakes. Click here for editor in chief Philip Ward's in-depth coverage of findings from a Scottish study about speech recognition, presented at the 2011 U.K. Radiological Congress (UKRC).
We're glad that you are part of the Healthcare Informatics Digital Community, and would love to hear from you, especially if you have suggestions about what you'd like to have reported or would like to be interviewed about some aspect of your job.
