Foreword

Online PHRs

Bridging the information divide

Online PHRs can overcome the geographical limitations of existing EMR systems, while encouraging patients towards selfcare.

Patient Records Online

Shared access for quality care

Online Personal Health Records signal a paradigm shift in the management of a patient data. By allowing easy access to patient information, online health records can enhance patient care and create a healthy doctor-patient relationship.

Interviews

Patient Health Records Online

The patients are much more engaged and satisfied when they feel that they have a kind of open relationship with their healthcare providers, hospitals or clinics; that there is free flow information and nothing is being with held.

Patient Health Records Online

Greater transparency and sharing of information can also improve communication, trust and shared-decision making between patients and doctors.

Patient Health Records Online

It’s better if the patient is informed about health, so he can manage his life and affairs in a better fashion.

Patient Health Records Online

The most popular features of the integrated PHR are access to lab test results and communication with physicians. Call it a Case Study.

Online Health Information

Accuracy, quality and privacy

Several e-Health initiatives are underway to empower the patient with the right information. The Internet, with its vast amounts of information, is a key player in turning the patient into an ‘informed patient’.

Healthcare Management

Health Tourism

The growth phenomenon

More affordable international travel and major advances in medical science, medical or health tourism is becoming less of a novelty and more of a global trend.

Knowledge Transfer and Human Resource Development in Medicine

CME and beyond

HR development could play a key role in providing quality healthcare. Care providers need to dedicate more resources to devise their HR policies and strategies.

Interruptions at the Workplace

A risk worth managing

While it is known that they can lead to errors, interruptions can also be imperative in high-risk domains such as healthcare, where patient safety and medical error reduction is now paramount. Human error theory can explain the concept of error and how errors occur at different levels in an organisation.

Medical Sciences

Chronic Pain Management

Integrated with primary care

With the number of individuals in need of assistance for chronic pain increasing each year, only a small fraction of patients with chronic pain are treated directly by the Pain Clinic.

Slow Medicine

Emerging concept in elderly care

Slow Medicine advocates less-aggressive and compassionate approach towards the elderly patients. Despite many ethical and professional apprehensions, a start has been made.

Interview

Slow Medicine

A compassionate approach to elderly care

The patient’s perspective is always, always central to the practice of Slow Medicine.

Cardiac Death Predisposition

New tools for early detection

Those who die a sudden death, probably are never aware of the potential risk they carry. Recently, new tools for diagnosing those prone to SCD have been introduced. This marks a key milestone in the detection of sudden cardiac death signs among healthy individuals.

Surgical Speciality

Bariatric Surgery

Experience with medical tourism

Medical tourism for obesity surgery is still in its infancy and needs to be taken care of.

Diagnostics

Radiology Beyond Anatomy

New value chain for personalised medicine

Radiological imaging is capable of providing 'functional' information for biomedical characterisation of disease beyond volumetric visualisation of structure with high spatial resolution. Improved technologies enable further transparency beyond imaging interlinked with important economical aspects, such as Six Sigma for improved and efficient patient care.

Technology, Equipment & Devices

Medical Device Market

Mega trends in Asia

Faced with an increasingly ageing society and rising healthcare costs, countries in Asia Pacific are expecting cost-effective medical devices to be developed by local companies.

Medical Products Manufacturing in India

Getting ready for growth

Soon India will be able to demonstrate its capabilities as an alternate manufacturing destination to China for many medical products.

Medical Devices Meet Consumer Electronics

Revolution in healthcare delivery

Advanced semiconductor technology is transforming healthcare. At the vanguard is an entirely new way of monitoring the human body-wirelessly, intelligently and at low cost. Microchip-sized wireless body monitoring systems are offering quality of life for users and providing critical data for healthcare professionals.

Facilities & Operations

Sustainable Hospital Design

Beyond the numbers

The new trend to design and build hospitals using sustainable technology, renewable resources and systems designed to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions is making it possible to achieve higher building performance in terms of reduced energy consumption, improved indoor air quality and a supportive healing environment.

The Hospital of the Future Isn’t...

Role of architects

The concepts for what the hospital of the future ‘is likely to be’ and ‘isn’t’ include distributed services, the ‘hospital at home’ project, ‘wearable hospital’ telemedicine innovations, ‘lean design’ principles and ‘cellular care.’ These concepts dictate the design professional’s responsibilities within an era of healthcare reform.

Casestudy

Baylor Emergency Department

Providing the state-of-the-art services

The Baylor University Medical Center's Emergency Department in Dallas, Texas has been operating at near capacity for almost 10 years. The high number of patients combined with the dearth of resources lead to an inevitable and unwelcome decline in service.

Quality and Safety

Creating a supportive culture

A process-oriented approach, which sees care as both social and technical, naturally supports a positive quality improvement strategy and aligns the major subcultures.

Benchmarking and Measuring Patient Safety

The Medway model

The Medway Nursing and Midwifery Accountability System (NMAS) is a model that calls nurses and midwives to account for their performance in relation to nursing care and patient safety.

Information Technology

Challenges in Managing Chronic Diseases

EMRs enable better care

The majority of healthcare expenditure worldwide is spent towards treating chronic diseases like diabetes. Electronic Medical Records could prove effective in the management of chronic diseases, facilitating the delivery of quality healthcare to the patients.

Semantic Web and Translational Medicine

Creating the next generation healthcare enterprise

Translational Medicine, which aims to improve communication between the basic and clinical sciences, coupled with informatics and semantic technologies will help in creating the next generation healthcare enterprise.

Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring

Improving COPD patient care

The medical world is in urgent need of providing new ways of dealing with the challenges of the profession. IT and sharing of competences among the staff must be part of the solution.

Insights into Healthcare IT

Transforming healthcare in Asia

Healthcare delivery can be improved by focussing on clinical leadership and governance, e-health, EHR, EMR, EPR, PHR, IT strategy and innovation.