Tolven received $3.6 million in venture capital in the fourth quarter last year, its first round of venture funding since launching the business in 2006... Read More »

Here is the Charlie Kemp interview by Sander Olson. Sander Olson has provided dozens of first hand interviews to Nextbigfuture. Sander is an online journalist who has been working parttime with Nextbigfuture.

Dr. Kemp is a Professor at the biomedical engineering department at Georgia Tech and Emory University. His lab is focused on developing robots that would be capable of aiding the sick and elderly. His lab has developed several custom robots, and has also received a PR2 robot from Willow Garage. Dr. Kemp believes that the healthcare industry could become one of the primary drivers of robotics development. 

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In October, the administration formally launched something called the "VA Blue Button," which allows veterans to download and view some medical information online. Primarily, it allows veterans to access self-entered health metrics such as blood pressure, weight and heart rate as well as emergency contact information, test results, family health history, military health history and other health-related information. Read More »

Sen. Patty Murray was named chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Thursday, and says she hopes to keep the Obama administration focused on the medical care and benefits due those who have served in the military.

"I am one who will hold any president accountable — regardless of political party — accountable for making sure that veterans get the care they need," said Murray, a Washington state Democrat. Read More »

It seemed at first like a standard bit of political rhetoric from Epic CEO Judy Faulkner, at a policy committee meeting on the meaningful use standards.

“I am nervous that the government is going to get into the EHR design business,” she said.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, unless you know that the government has been in that business for 30 years, with the VA’s VistA system.

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As one of the few healthcare CIOs who didn’t grow up in the industry, Bill Fawns may be a bit more willing to look at different solutions to his organization’s software issues. And while Medsphere’s OpenVista technology was born and raised in the VA, it’s still seen by many lifers as the unconventional choice. Perhaps that’s why the two have come together in Kern Medical Center’s quest for an EMR that will earn it Meaningful Use monies. Read More »

Susan Spencer Conklin is a networker, she’s not a programmer, but knows about programming, she’s not a designer but knows how to sew and in the last months she’s been giving presentations to invite developers to help create a suite of open source software to produce and modify clothing patterns in open data formats to match an individual’s body measurement and generate customized patterns as printable files. Read More »

Silver Hill Hospital and Manatee Glens are among the organizations that have overcome these barriers, identified effective EHR technologies, and implemented them successfully. Read More »

OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Leshmaniasis, etc. Read More »

Ken Kizer is the miracle man of U.S. health care. Mr. Kizer brought in bold reform that transformed the vast and woeful Veterans Health Administration into an efficient, effective model institution with sky-high patient satisfaction. Starting in 1994, it took him five years to reduce costs and increase quality of care, while nearly doubling the number of patients.

The measurable results included a reduction in medication errors and patient deaths.

“What's wrong with expecting the government to do a good job?” he would ask those professing amazement at the change.

Key to the VHA's stunning improvement was the implementation of easily accessible electronic health records (EHRs).

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