News From Around the Web
> The winner of the Heritage Open mHealth Challenge was announced last week at Health DataPalooza IV. Co-sponsored by Heritage Provider Network, Open mHealth, and the University of California, Los Angeles, the challenge was created to catalyze the development of mobile applications using an open architecture to help them communicate with one another and function on multiple devices. The winning team and recipient of the $100,000 prize created Mood Rhythm, a mobile application (which runs on iOS and Android) developed to help patients with bipolar disorder better monitor and analyze their daily rhythms and stay in balance. Article
> Vertical Health, a health information company focused on pain management, musculoskeletal diseases, mental health, and endocrine disorders, has announced its acquisition of Mobile Health Interventions (MHI) and HealthTxts.com. According to the announcement, the platform allows individuals, clinicians, researchers, and industry partners to create robust, tailored health interventions through mobile phones. Article
> Members of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a not-for-profit health plan serving more than one million members in New England, are now able to enroll in Voxiva's Care4Life, a personalized diabetes self-management program delivered to their mobile phones. Care4Life combines diabetes education with proven evidence-based behavior change techniques. The program uses text messages, a personal online web portal and a mobile website to connect, engage and support people living with diabetes. Care4Life provides education, medication and appointment reminders, blood glucose tracking, weight/exercise goal setting and tracking, and a motivational virtual coach. Article
EMR News
> The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's Beacon team recently released its first guide to help interested stakeholders learn from the experiences of the Beacon communities in implementing electronic health records. The guide, "Improve Hospital Transitions and Chronic Disease Care Management Using Admission, Discharge and Transfer-Based Alerts" is "designed for communities that have a stated goal to reduce avoidable ED visits, avoidable hospitalizations, and preventable readmissions and have identified the implementation of ADT-based alerts as a potential strategy to achieve the goals," according to the authors. Article
Healthcare IT News
> For emergency operators in New York City, it was back to basics with paper and pencil when a computer system that relays messages to dispatchers--who then send out police, fire and emergency workers--stopped working last month, the New York Times reports. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Times that operators had to fill out slips describing an emergency, and then use "runners" to send those notes to the dispatchers, who work on the same floor in the 911 headquarters in Brooklyn. Article
And Finally… Unintended consequences. Article