Category Archives: Health information technology

Simulated birth and 3D brain mass part of AHCJ field trip tour

Leave a reply
Bara Vaida

About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: Bara VaidaMichael Foley, M.D., shows AHCJ members, how to “deliver” a baby at University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix. The school uses robotic dummies to simulate real-life situations so that medical students can practice care delivery before working on real people.

PHOENIX – Seventeen members of the Association of Health Care Journalists watched a simulated birth and viewed a giant brain mass through 3D glasses as part of a whirlwind tour of three Phoenix-area health care institutions on Thursday.

The tour was one of two field trips offered by AHCJ at its annual conference. Journalists visited the cancer center at Mayo Clinic-Phoenix, Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, and the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

During the jam-packed day, Mayo Clinic officials showed off photon beam therapy and provided a tour of its cancer center, including its Precision Neurotherapeutics lab. Continue reading →

Is the ‘medical virtualist’ specialty coming to a health system near you?

Leave a reply
Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Photo: Roy Blumenthal via Flickr

The Journal of the American Medical Association not long ago published an online editorial by two physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian that called for the creation of a new medical specialty focused on virtual care.

Others expanded on this idea in a blog post last month on the Health Affairs website, calling for a “virtualist movement“ that involves not just physician specialists but whole care teams devoted to virtual care. This virtual team would include nurses, pharmacists, medical social workers, psychologists, nutritionists and physical therapists. Continue reading →

A Politico editor mines tech expertise for real-world tale

Leave a reply
Susan Heavey

About Susan Heavey

Susan Heavey, (@susanheavey) a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on social determinants of health and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on resources and tip sheets at determinants@healthjournalism.org.

Arthur Allen’s piece, The ‘Frequent Flier’ Program That Grounded a Hospital’s Soaring Costs, ran recently as part of Politico’s What Works series. Allen leveraged his IT expertise to report out a broader piece on health information technology efforts in Texas.

Like many journalists in Washington, D.C., Arthur Allen knows his jargon.

As the editor for Politico’s eHealth, Allen is all too familiar with the trappings of Congress and the resulting litany of regulations and rules that follow any major health-related legislation, including a 2009 bill that aimed to encourage doctors and hospitals to invest in information technology. Continue reading →

Takeaways for journalists from health IT’s biggest event of the year

Leave a reply
Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Photo: Courtesy of HIMSS

The largest health IT event of the year dropped into Las Vegas last week and brought along more than 43,000 attendees. The HIMSS conference is where chief information officers, chief medical information officers and other health care techies who usually toil in relative anonymity get to be rock stars for a week.

HIMSS – the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society – is a leading voice in advancing and educating about technology in the health sector. Its annual conference is the must-attend event for those working in health IT and digital health.

There are a lot of great health care stories that come out of the HIMSS conference. Continue reading →

#AHCJ18 panel to cover some of the hottest health IT trends

Leave a reply
Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

New to blockchain? Predictive analytics got you scratching your head? A little fuzzy on the ins and outs of the “Internet of Things?” Wondering how to separate hype from reality in technology adoption?

We will be discussing all these topics and more during the session, “Health IT trends you need to know now,” at Health Journalism 2018. These panelists will guide us through some of these tech trends and provide specific examples of how technology is reshaping the health sector: Continue reading →