Health IT training center opens

With patient care becoming more complex -- and with added emphasis on coordinating care and measuring the quality of care -- health care professionals need to know how to use emerging technology.

To meet that need, a new training center called QIT -- a merging of "quality" and "information technology" -- has opened Downtown.

The center already has held training sessions for an array of health workers, managers and students. In the past week alone, there have been sessions for 75 local emergency medical technicians, skilled nursing staff from five different organizations and more than 60 graduate medical students.

The center is a joint project of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative and Health Careers Futures, and is designed to be a central location offering specialized knowledge to area hospitals and schools that's not available elsewhere.

On Wednesday, Karen Wolk Feinstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

The foundation and the Allegheny County Community Infrastructure and Tourism Fund each put in $200,000 to launch the center, which is located at the foundation offices in Centre City Tower on Smithfield Street. The center will be sustained financially through a mix of fees, grants and government support.

"HIT [health information technology] is here and it's here to stay," said Jason Kunzman, deputy director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kunzman also is the former CFO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

Speaking via video link from Israel's Clalit Health Services, physician Ran Balicer, an internationally recognized expert on clinical quality improvement, said enhanced data has helped monitor patients and detected patient health issues before they became major health problems and even has prevented hospital readmissions. "IT and data are crucial to this process," he said.

At QIT, the roster of instructors "runs the gamut from peer to peer, graduate student to grad student, policy makers, our own small army of coaches and trainers, local and national thought leaders," said Ms. Feinstein. "It depends on what we are teaching, to whom, and our aspirations."

Training such as that provided by QIT is badly needed for young people pursuing careers in health care, said Dan Bishop, co-founder and chief innovation officer for Qualaris Healthcare Solutions, who is currently pursuing both a medical degree and a degree in biomedical engineering. Qualaris specializes in developing software to improve patient safety. Mr. Bishop is also a board member for Health Careers Futures.

Medical schools will teach all about the human anatomy, said Mr. Bishop, "but they won't spend time on the basics of information technology that will be an integral part of my practice."

For more information on QIT, contact the Jewish Healthcare Foundation at 412-594-2586.

Trident Health performs 2,000th robotic surgery

Trident Health’s South Carolina Institute for Robotic Surgery recently performed its 2,000th robotic surgery.
The procedure was a radical nephrectomy (surgical removal of a kidney) performed by Dr. Ted Brisson, who also performed the Institute’s first case on Oct. 23, 2008.

In less than four years, the Institute has performed 2,101 robotic procedures, more than twice as many as any other hospital or health system in the entire Charleston area. The South Carolina Institute for Robotic Surgery is located at Trident Medical Center and consists of an advanced team of 18 surgeons with specialized robotics training.

Trident Medical Center is now a case observation site for training robotic surgeons throughout the southeastern United States. The Institute has been recognized nationally as a model robotics program for surgical best practices by demonstrating an exceptionally trained robotics team, surgical efficiency and superior patient outcomes.

Hospitals from around the country observe the Institute’s robotics team at Trident to learn these best practices. “It is rewarding to introduce other physicians to the excitement of robotic surgery and to have a part in their mentoring,” said Jeffrey Lafond, MD.

Dr. Lafond recently performed the Lowcountry’s first single site gallbladder surgery. Single site refers to one incision, which is the diameter of a pencil eraser, through which the surgical procedure is accomplished.

For more information about Trident Health, please visit www.tridenthealthsystem.com or call (843) 797-7000

Stick-On Electronic Tattoos

A flexible electronic device stuck on the skin could provide irritation-free monitoring of heart, brain, and muscle activity.

Researchers have made stretchable, ultrathin electronics that cling to skin like a temporary tattoo and can measure electrical activity from the body. These electronic tattoos could allow doctors to diagnose and monitor conditions like heart arrhythmia or sleep disorders noninvasively.

John A. Rogers, a professor of materials science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed a prototype that can replicate the monitoring abilities of bulky electrocardiograms and other medical devices that are normally restricted to a clinical or laboratory setting. This work was presented today in Science.

To achieve flexible, stretchable electronics, Rogers employed a principle he had already used to achieve flexibility in substrates. He made the components—all composed of traditional, high-performance materials like silicon—not only incredibly thin, but also "structured into a serpentine shape" that allows them to deform without breaking. The result, says Rogers, is that "the whole system takes on this kind of spiderweb layout."

In the past, says Rogers, he was able to create devices that were either flexible but not stretchable, or stretchable but not flexible. In particular, his previous work was limited by the fact that the electronics portions of his designs couldn't flex and stretch as much as the substrate they were mounted on.

The electronic tattoo achieves the mechanical properties of skin, which can stand up to twisting, poking, and pulling without breaking. Rogers's tattoo can also conform to the topography of the skin as well as stretch and shift with it. It can be worn for extended periods without producing the irritation that often results from adhesive tapes and rigid electronics. Although Rogers's preliminary tests involved a custom-made substrate, he also demonstrated that the electronics could be mounted onto a commercially available temporary tattoo.

The prototype was equipped with electrodes to measure electric signals produced by muscle and brain activity. This could be useful for noninvasive diagnosis of sleep apnea or monitoring of premature babies' heart activity. It also might be possible, Rogers says, to use the tattoos to stimulate the muscles of physical rehabilitation patients, although this use wasn't demonstrated in the paper.

To demonstrate the device's potential as a human-computer interface, Rogers mounted one of the tattoos on a person's throat and used measurements of the electrical activity in the throat muscles to control a computer game. The signal from the device contained enough information for software to distinguish among the spoken words "left," "right," "up," and "down" to control a cursor on the screen.

The device included sensors for temperature, strain, and electric signals from the body. It also housed LEDs to provide visual feedback; photodetectors to measure light exposure; and tiny radio transmitters and receivers. The device is small enough that it requires only minuscule amounts of power, which it can harvest via tiny solar cells and via a wireless coil that receives energy from a nearby transmitter. Rogers hopes to build in some sort of energy-storage ability, like a tiny battery, in the near future. The researchers are also working on making the device wireless.

Ultimately, Rogers says, "we want to have a much more intimate integration" with the body, beyond simply mounting something very closely to the skin. He hopes that his devices will eventually be able to use chemical information from the skin in addition to electrical information.

Over 30,000 Medical Billing and Coding Students Trained on CollaborateMD Cloud Educational Medical Billing Software

Thousands of Medical Billing and Coding Students Trained Annually With Custom Tailored Version of CollaborateMD Cloud Medical Billing Software.

CollaborateMD (CMD), a leading provider of easy and affordable Cloud Medical Billing Software and Practice Management Software has been helping medical billing and coding students across the nation with training since 2006. Over the past 5 years, 30,000 medical coding students have been effectively trained on ClaimGear, the popular educational version of CMD’s medical billing software.

In 2005, Corinthian Colleges, Inc (CCi) ended their searching for a medical billing and coding product that would allow their students to be trained on updated, current and “real-life” software. CCi chose CMD knowing they could deliver the perfect fit for their curriculum; students would be utilizing the exact same software as their commercial customers and because it was cloud-based, the students’ software would always be up to date with the latest healthcare technology and information.

The use of ClaimGear started in 2006 at CCi campuses across the nation in the Medical Insurance Billing and Coding (MIBC) programs. CMD easily customized their commercial medical billing software to allow students to perform billing exercises mimicking real-world scenarios like their commercial counterparts. Students would enter patients, claims, appointments, insurance and patient payments, and run reports. A big plus for students was the fact they no longer had to backup or restore their work for each class. Since ClaimGear is cloud-based, each student has their own account and student can pick up right where they left off each class and use it at home.

To enhance training effectiveness, CMD created an Instructor and Student Web Portal. The Instructor Portal allows for full management of the curriculum, courses, assignments and best of all, instant scoring of the students work with the click of a button. In addition, the portal allows the instructor to monitor the work and progress of each student to ensure their success during and at the end of the course. The Student Portal allows students to manage and grade their own work. If students aren’t happy with their score, they can go back into ClaimGear, fix their errors, and re-score their work to improve their knowledge and understanding of medical billing and coding. Students who complete the course work with a score of 100% are acknowledging by receiving a certificate of achievement personally signed by the CollaborateMD CEO, Mr. 

Douglas Kegler. Instructors that successfully complete all of the required ClaimGear training are also properly recognized by receiving a signed certificate of achievement from Mr. Douglas Kegler. The certificate of achievement is important because it lets industry know the person owning the certificate is qualified in the use of CMD’s Cloud Medical Billing and Coding Software.

Douglas Kegler, CEO of CollaborateMD, stated, “We believe our educational ClaimGear medical billing software product and portals provides the instructors and students with the appropriate tools to improve the efficiency of training, provide on-time student feedback, and most importantly, helps prepare these students for a successful transition from academia to the real world of gainful employment.”

About CollaborateMD

Since 1999, CollaborateMD's innovative cloud healthcare software solution has contributed to the financial success of medical practices and medical billing services across the country.

CollaborateMD's 100% Java solution, with its simplicity, ANSI 5010 compliance, affordable monthly fees, and 99% First Pass Claim Acceptance rate allows thousands of medical providers to see a true return on investment. CollaborateMD customers enjoy fast implementation, exceptional and unlimited support and most importantly, increased office efficiency and reduced account receivables. For more information, visit http://www.CollaborateMD.com or call 888.348.8457

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/8/prweb9823583.htm

Smart Sutures That Detect Infections

Courtesy - Technology Review

Plastic or silk threads covered with temperature sensors and micro-heaters could keep tabs on infections and provide therapy

Stitches that sense: New smart sutures use ultrathin silicon sensors to measure temperature at a wound site. 

Surgical sutures are mindless threads no more. Researchers have now coated them with sensors that could monitor wounds and speed up healing.

The electronic sutures, which contain ultrathin silicon sensors integrated on polymer or silk strips, can be threaded through needles, and in animal tests researchers were able to lace them through skin, pull them tight, and knot them without degrading the devices.

The sutures can precisely measure temperature—elevated temperatures indicate infection—and deliver heat to a wound site, which is known to aid healing. And John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and inventor of the smart sutures, imagines that they could also be laden with devices that provide electrical stimulation to heal wounds. "Ultimately, the most value would be when you can release drugs from them in a programmed way," he says. The researchers could do that by coating the electronic threads with drug-infused polymers, which would release the chemicals when triggered by heat or an electrical pulse.

The smart sutures, reported online in the journal Small, rely on silicon-based devices that flex and stretch. Rogers and his colleagues make the devices with silicon membranes and gold electrodes and wires that are just a few hundred nanometers thick and patterned in a serpentine shape. The technology, which they have also used in inflatable catheters and medical tattoos (see "Stick-On Electronic Tattoos"), is being commercialized by MC10, a Cambridge, Massachusetts–based startup Rogers cofounded (see "Making Stretchable Electronics").

The researchers first use chemicals to slice off an ultrathin film of silicon from a silicon wafer. With a rubber stamp, they lift off and transfer the nanomembranes to polymer or silk strips. Then they deposit metal electrodes and wires on top and encapsulate the entire device in an epoxy coating.

They have built two types of temperature sensors on the sutures. One is a silicon diode that shifts its current output with temperature; the other, a platinum nanomembrane resistor, changes its resistance with temperature. The micro-heaters, meanwhile, are simply gold filaments that heat up when current passes through them.

All the materials used in the devices are safe for use in the body, and the biggest challenge was to make the sutures flexible, Rogers says. Silicon is brittle, so making the nanomembranes as thin as possible and laying them out in a winding pattern was key for elasticity. Placing the silicon halfway between the top epoxy and bottom polymer surfaces of the suture is also crucial. "When you bend the entire construct, the top surface is in tension and the bottom is in compression, but at midpoint the strains are very small," he says.

The researchers have tested the sutures' mechanical flexibility and toughness on incisions in rat skin, but they haven't tested the temperature sensing and heating capabilities in animals yet. They are also working on making the devices wireless.