Georgia schools get telemedicine access; European Commission launches health records research project;

News From Around the Web

> Students in Jenkins County, Ga., in need of medical care now need only go as far as the school nurse's office, thanks to the Georgia Partnership for TeleHealth. The county' school system recently began offering telemedicine to both students and teachers, with equipment funded by a grant from Amerigroup, an agency that manages the Medicaid and Peachcare programs in Georgia, The Millen News reports. Article

> The European Commission just launched a new research program--MyHealthAvatar--aimed at eventually enabling doctors to access their patients' records from anywhere in the European Union, according to an announcement from the U.K.-based University of Lincoln, which is involved in the project. The program, which will look to develop new approaches for healthcare data collecting and sharing, will last three years and cost 2.4 million Euro (roughly $3.1 million). Announcement

Health Insurance News

> Insurers have been warning that the reform law's age-rating provision will cause "rate shock" among consumers, particularly young adults. But a new report from the Urban Institute says those fears are overstated. Article

> After releasing the draft version of the application consumers will use to apply for individual policies through health insurance exchanges, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is facing criticism that it's too complex. The application, which was issued with little fanfare, will "help people make apples-to-apples comparisons of costs and coverage between health insurance plans and learn whether they can get a break in costs," HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said. Article

Medical Imaging News

> Stanford University engineers have developed a high-resolution endoscope that is as thin as human hair, but has a resolution four-times stronger than previous endoscopes of a similar design. According to an article published in the journal Optics Express, the prototype of the device can resolve objects that are about 2.5 microns in size. Today's high-resolution endoscopes can resolve objects to about 10 microns in size. A micron is one-one thousandth of a millimeter. Article

And Finally... Glad I wasn't on this bus. Article