Health care

The government's $19 billion incentive package to compel doctors and hospitals to digitize their inefficient paper record systems is nice and shiny. But until a platform exists to support the easy yet secure flow of highly sensitive personal information, that promise could also be empty.

Seeing a business opportunity, General Electric unveiled on Thursday its new unit, eHealth, a suite of solutions that aims to provide the necessary infrastructure. (GE reports that it is investing $90 million to launch eHealth.) It is a daunting task, but if it works, a digital record system that streamlines connectivity between clinicians and … Read more

Officials at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) announced Tuesday that the state's Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) registry is going digital on or near December 1.

Until now, as a POLST program coordinator explained to me, someone with chronic or terminal illness has had the option to go to a doctor's office and fill out a POLST form in the presence of a doctor or nurse, and then keep the document at home where, ideally, emergency medical personnel could find it (such as the refrigerator). If the paper is lost, determining the wishes of the patient … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In a wide-ranging interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, announced a low-cost and very portable ultrasound scanner called the Vscan.

"It's about the same size as a BlackBerry," Immelt said, holding up a white device that appeared to fold in the middle like a flip-phone. The top of the device showed an ultrasound image (of a patient's liver, we were told), while the bottom showed control keys.

"This is Moore's law," he said, saying that the device had the same power as a console ultrasound … Read more

If you're hoping to retire as soon as possible with the intention of never working again, you might want to reconsider. Retirees who transition from full-time work to full retirement in one fell swoop actually contract more diseases and function worse doing day-to-day tasks than those who continue to work even just temporarily or part-time, according to a national study published in the October issue of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

"Choosing a suitable type of bridge employment will help retirees transition better into full retirement and in good physical and mental health," says co-author Kenneth Shultz, … Read more

The Merck Manual, a New York Times best seller that has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, is one of those medical tomes you don't typically find in a layperson's home library. It's big, heavy, not terribly exciting, and like most physicians' desk references, not the cheapest book around.

Not to be outdone by the competition, Merck & Co. released a new edition Thursday, called The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook (3rd edition). Because the book is still big, heavy, not terribly exciting, and not terribly cheap, Merck has released its contents as an iPhone app as well (home edition: $9.99; professional edition: $29.99), thereby solving its problems of size, weight, cost, and yes, even excitement, as the app has way more going on than its old-fashioned counterpart.… Read more

Researchers this week revealed the results of some demographics studies of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), something they say had yet to be studied to this extent. If you're a married white male driving a convertible, listen up while you still can.

The studies were presented at the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation's 2009 annual meeting in San Diego this week. One study, which analyzed the audiometric testing data from 5,290 people ages 20 to 69, finds that more than 13 percent suffer from some level of NIHL, which means some 24 million Americans might … Read more

It's all over the news. A major analysis published this week of more than a dozen studies in North America, Italy, Scotland, and Ireland designed to determine the effect of smoking bans on heart attack rates shows a 17 percent reduction in heart attacks in places where bans were in effect for one year. That rate more than doubles to 36 percent in places where bans have been in effect for three years.

The impact of smoking bans is "bigger than expected," the BBC reports. The bans are "potent weapons in the battle to prevent heart … Read more

Some women appear to be able to ovulate more than once a month. This can result in a condition called superfetation, which means conceiving while already pregnant.

According to NBC's Nancy Snyderman:

Here's how it happens--egg and sperm implant. Of course, that's your first pregnancy. But if you ovulate more than one time a month--and women do--and a sperm happens to meet that egg, and they, too, implant, guess what? You get a second fetus.

This is precisely what doctors think happened to Arkansas couple Todd and Julia Grovenburg. An ultrasound revealed that a male fetus appears … Read more

Making sense of medical bills can be a challenge for both the patient and doctor. A new service from Intuit is trying to ease that pain.

Quicken Health Bill Pay, a free online service from Intuit, is meant to help consumers better understand and pay their medical bills online. The service presents the bills in an easy-to-read language, said Intuit, so patients can view the services they received and see the exact balance due after insurance. From there, they can pay the bill directly online.

The service debuts as tech companies are increasingly directing their attention to the field of … Read more