April 2004 Newsbytes

Raymond D. Aller, MD;
Hal Weiner;
Michael Weilert, MD

Directory of directories has punch, hit often

While looking for online directories of clinical medicine Web sites several years ago, University of Iowa librarian Eric Rumsey made a surprising discovery: The most comprehensive of them weren’t well known, in part because they weren’t listed with the popular search engine Yahoo. "It seemed like the logical thing to do was to find all the lists that existed," he says. So he began compiling his own list of useful online medical directories, and the Hardin meta directory, or Hardin MD, was born.

At www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/index.html. html, users can find links to online directories addressing nearly 300 medical topics ranging from AIDS to yeast infections. Most of the links come from educational sites. Rumsey doesn’t track each site’s popularity, but he says the most frequently accessed subject pages are dermatology, sexually transmitted diseases, women’s health, orthopedics, and autoimmune diseases. All told, Hardin MD receives about 1.5 million hits each month, a number that is not that surprising since Rumsey believes Hardin MD is the Web’s only meta directory, or directory of directories, for health information sites.

Hardin MD has become increasingly popular in recent years as Rumsey has refined and added subject headings-"cervical cancer," for example, instead of just "cancer." He’s also seen an upswing in usage since Hardin MD began offering links to medical images. "When we add pictures to a page, the use often doubles or triples," Rumsey says.

Rumsey gathers directory sites himself and accepts suggestions from others. To be included, a site must not require user registration and must be fast loading, written in English (or offer an English language version), and, most important, be well maintained. "It’s very easy for people to start directory pages, but the problem is maintaining them," he says.

"The Web is in some ways a democracy," Rumsey adds, "and people choose the good sites. Generally, if a site’s not good, it’s not going to last."

Misys introduces Optimum suite of products

Misys Healthcare Systems has introduced Misys Optimum, a suite of products that provides physicians and caregivers with integrated information management across the continuum of care.

Misys Optimum is composed of the Misys CPR enterprise-wide electronic patient records system, Misys EMR electronic medical records system, Misys Vision suite of patient-management and administrative applications for large enterprises, and Misys Homecare solution.

"With Misys Optimum, the health enterprise is empowered to reach out to community-based, independent physicians and home care organizations, providing continuity of information regardless of where the patient is seen across the health care community," says Misys CEO Tom Skelton.

Misys Optimum operates in conjunction with Misys’ laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, data warehouse, and Web-enabled clinical decision support systems.

Misys Healthcare Systems

Telcor marketing integrated outreach system

Telcor has introduced an integrated outreach information system for automating requisition processing between a laboratory outreach program and its clients.

Telcor’s outreach system automates the requisition life cycle, from order through billing, and includes profitability measurement tools, accounts receivable, and claims submission and remittance.

Telcor Inc.

Fletcher Flora offering LabPak Ace Manager

Fletcher Flora has introduced the LabPak Ace Manager for Alfa Wassermann’s Ace chemistry system. This single-instrument LIS comes standard with the Ace instrument interface and can be expanded to six instruments.

The Windows-based system offers single-screen order entry, chartable patient sample and cumulative reports, and CLIA/ COLA/ JCAHO-compliant quality control. It also features autofaxing and single-page cost revenue analysis and billing reports and can be upgraded for multiple instruments, workstations, and locations.

Fletcher Flora Inc.

PracticeXpert acquires transcription company

PracticeXpert Inc., a provider of medical billing and other practice management services, has acquired the Houston-based medical transcription company Singer MedScript.

Acquiring this company, says Jonathan Doctor, CEO of PracticeXpert, “will give us a platform and base of operations for our Texas medical billing services. In addition, the physician customer base for this company’s transcription services are all excellent candidates for using our PXpert revenue management system and other practice management services. We anticipate that our ability to cross-sell transcription services to existing physician clients, as well as cross-sell billing services to transcription clients, will be greatly enhanced by this transaction.”

PracticeXpert Inc.

Contracts

Wyndgate Technologies has contracted to install its Wyndgate advanced transfusion management system in 14 hospitals and three ambulatory surgery centers in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Utah that are owned and operated by Franklin, Tenn.-based Iasis Healthcare Corp.

Wyndgate has also signed contracts for its transfusion management system with Baptist Health System, San Antonio and south Texas, Central DuPage Health System, Winfield, Ill., and Riverside County Regional Medical Center, Kankakee, Ill.

Wyndgate Technologies

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Ga.) recently selected MedPlus’ ChartMaxx as its enterprise-wide electronic patient record solution.

MedPlus

Eaton Rapids (Mich.) Medical Center has purchased Meditech’s Magic health care information system.

Meditech

TheraDoc Inc. has contracted to provide the UC Davis Health System, Sacramento, Calif., with its expert systems technology and its suite of decision-support knowledge modules, including Antibiotic Assistant, Infection Control Assistant, Public Health Assistant, Adverse Drug Event Assistant, and Clinical Alerts Assistant.

TheraDoc Inc.

Dr. Aller is director of bioterrorism preparedness and response for Los Angeles County Public Health Acute Communicable Diseases. He can be reached at raller@ladhs.org. Weiner is president of Weiner Consulting Services, LLC, Florence, Ore. He can be reached at hal@weinerconsulting.com. Dr. Weilert is director of laboratories, Community Hospitals of Central California, Fresno. He can be reached at mweilertmd@communitymedical.org.