Two of the nation’s largest healthcare information networks, Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, and Surescripts(R), The Nation’s E-Prescription Network(TM), today announced an agreement to pioneer the formation of an integrated service to make laboratory and prescription information broadly and easily accessible to physicians. The collaboration is designed to improve patient safety and clinical outcomes.

…click here to read more

Demonstration of remote patient monitoring at the HIMSS 2010 conference. Telemedicine allows skilled professionals to monitor patients’ vital signs even while the patient – or the caregiver – is at home or another remote location.

Great compliments to @jchristenson for sending in this Voalte video from #HIMSS10! We have been getting videos from multiple people at HIMSS10. We are posting them as we get them uploaded. Thanks to Trey Lauderdale for helping make this demo possible.

Voalte Demo from Jamie Christenson on Vimeo.

An overview of iSOFT, our clients, market penetration and global reach. Find them in Booth 5549 in Hall B

1 Million knee replacements in the US per year show how important medical technology is for the metal working industry: Douglas Sellers, CEO of SellersMedia and Co-Organizer of the “Metal meets Medical” Trade Forum explains how important it is for the metal industry to concentrate on this fast growing sector.

A 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement will go into effect March 1, after the Senate failed to pass a bill to stop the cuts.

But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a guidance just hours after the Senate adjourned for the weekend that buys doctors some more time.

“We believe Congress is working to avoid the negative update that will take effect March 1, 2010,” the guidance reads. “Consequently, CMS has instructed its contractors to hold claims containing services paid under the [Medicare Physician Fee Schedule] for the first 10 business days of March.”

Full Story on Med Page Today

There are many jems at #HIMSS10 in Atlanta this year.  One of them that you should make sure not to miss is “Your Nurse is On”!  The folks of http://www.yournurseison.com/ have created a call in system for your nurse pools.

In the simplest terms, your facility is able to apply union rules and state staffing rules to your nursing pools and call whichever nurses you need in the order they should be called.  Most medical facilities do this today using very expensive nursing labor.  Instead of using nurses and staff to make the calls, you can use http://www.yournurseison.com/ to make them automatically!

This type of system has proven itself time and again around the country for school districts.  Large districts use a very similar system to call every day for substitute teachers.  The http://www.yournurseison.com/ system handles this same need for nurses.  Each nurse can be paged, called, emailed, or texted their possible assignment.  The system can be automatically responded to with either a yes or no.  Very slick, and much more effecient than using your staff to make phone calls instead of caring for patients.

Check them out on Monday, March 1st at HIMSS10 at Booth 3606!

Many MANY of our readers and followers are attending HIMSS this year. Several folks have volunteered to take videos of the experiences and festivities for me as I am not able to attend this year. We are looking for vendor discussions and descriptions of their applications. We are looking for a couple of specifics:

• Your Nurse is On
• Voalte`
• Care360
• New Applications for the iPhone / Blackberry
• Tele-Medicine tools
• Google health
• Microsoft health
• Cisco tele-presence
• And anything else that you think is cool and should be shared!

Let us know about your video and we will make sure you get full credit and a backlink from HealthTechnica!

Contact Shawn.Riley@healthtechnica.com as you find things you want to share.