April 2011

The use of electronic prescribing has dramatically reduced medication errors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, according to a study in the March edition of the Journal of Psychiatric Practice.

The study revealed that while using health IT, the medication error rate dropped from 27.89 per 1,000 patient days to 3.43 per 1,000 patient days over a five-year period. In addition, there were no drug errors that caused permanent harm or death of patients over the course of the study, which spanned nearly 620,000 drug doses. The findings, available to subscribers, were published by amednews.com. Another report, conducted in the March issue of Health Affairs, showed that of 154 peer-reviewed studies from 2007 to 2010 that looked at health IT, 92 percent reached positive conclusions regarding electronic medical records (EMRs).

Seventy percent of adults think the U.S. healthcare system needs to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. A large majority also want their care to include health IT such as EMRs and data exchange, according to a Commonwealth Fund survey.

A large majority of respondents want their doctors to use health IT: 88 percent thought it was important or very important for doctors to use EMRs, and 92 percent thought it was important or very important for doctors to be able to share information electronically with other doctors. Survey respondents also want to use technology to manage their own healthcare—currently, only 14 percent of adults with Internet access reported that they can access their medical records online and just one in five can schedule appointments electronically or email their doctors. Of those who can't do any of those things, half said they would like to have electronic access to records and more than half would like to schedule appointments online, and to be able to email their doctors.

Europe’s approach to privacy is notoriously scattershot, with the media and users often reacting — or overreacting — to a constant stream of new rules, regulations and proposals. Sometimes there’s more heat than light, but at other points the consternation seems justified. Take the example of recent uproar in France, where last month the government introduced new data retention rules that have Internet users and businesses up in arms. Under the new system, sites must keep a record of every visitor’s username, email address and password for a year. Plus they have to keep a file of every time the user interacted with the site, and what they did. Oh, and if they've got them, their postal addresses and phone numbers, too. All of it, for 12 months.

The price of broadband and phone services in Europe is poised to rise as the Continent’s big operators win large rate increases from their national regulators before the implementation of a new law that gives the European Commission more influence over setting of rates.

In Germany, Italy and Spain, the former monopolies, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Telefónica, have sought increases of as much as 25 percent over three years in the fees they charge other operators to rent access to their land line networks. The fees, called wholesale access charges, average €6.67, or $9.63, a customer a month in Europe, according to a survey by Cullen International, a research group in Brussels. They can reach more than €10 in countries like Germany, where wholesale charges are typically passed on to consumers through higher retail prices.