The American Health Information Management Association’s (AHIMA)Foundation of Research and Education is launching a new projectto use the consolidated health informatics standards accepted bythe Department of Health and Human Services for federally requiredassessment instruments used in long-term care.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has proposed theuse of focus groups to learn about consumer awareness and perceptionsof health IT and how to engage consumers in development of ITapplications, which the agency published in the Dec. 28 issue of the Federal Register.

 Investment in a universal healthcare program, combined with incentiveplans and investments in health IT adoption could result in $456billion in reduced spending over 10 years, according to a newCommonwealth Fund report, Bending the Curve: Options for Achieving Savings and Improving Value in Health Spending.

 A new spending bill currently in the Senate could provide the TheOffice of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology(ONCHIT) with $61 million in funds for programs next year.

 The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Chairman MikeLeavitt has released a statement regarding the benefits of adoptingnationwide health IT policies: “The benefits of utilizing healthinformation technology for keeping EHRs and other purposes are clear.This technology will produce a higher quality of care, while reducingmedical costs and errors, which kill more Americans each year thanhighway accidents, breast cancer or AIDS.”

 One of the objections to the implementation of speech recognitionsoftware in a radiology practice is that it generates more errors thantraditional transcription methods. According to a scientificpresentation at the 93rd scientific assembly and annual meeting of theRadiological Society of North America (RSNA), the opposite is true:transcribed reports show higher error rates than automated speechrecognition applications.

 One of the truisms in management is that a small percentage of theworkload takes a disproportionately large amount of time to complete.In diagnostic imaging, so-called “hung” studies—cases that are stalledin the system—represent an almost insignificant proportion of totalimaging volume, yet their disposition requires significant effort toresolve.

 Diagnostic radiology generates a lot of data. Although the practice’simages can be parsed and relevant information can be acquired via theutilization of DICOM tools, free-text generated radiology reports havelong languished in silos of unconnected data. A natural languageprocessing (NLP) application developed at Massachusetts GeneralHospital (MGH) in Boston holds the promise of allowing researchers thecapability to data mine unstructured radiology reports.