Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 
Mike Valentine, VP North American Sales
mike.valentine@mtuitive.com
508.771.5800 

-January 13, 2010-

Humber River Regional Hospital chooses mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology to meet CCO standard 

Becomes the seventeenth Ontario hospital to implement xPert for Pathology

Boston, MA – Humber River Regional Hospital in Weston, Ontario, has selected mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology synoptic reporting solution to meet Cancer Care Ontario’s 2008-2009 CAP/CS aligned data standard for pathology reporting.

Standardized pathology reporting increases the availability and consistency of cancer pathology information that is essential for treatment decisions, evaluation, and research.

mTuitive complies with the 2008-2009 CAP/CS aligned data standard developed by Cancer Care Ontario in conjunction with the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Cancer Committee, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Joint Committee on Cancer. The CAP checklists¹ for breast, lung, colorectal, prostate, and endometrium were amended to include the mandatory pathologic collaborative staging elements.

xPert for Pathology interfaces with all available Pathology and Laboratory Information Systems on the market which lends itself to wide use throughout the province.  Other Ontario hospitals utilizing mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology synoptic reporting solution to meet the CCO data standard include Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, The Scarborough Hospital, North York General Hospital, Lakeridge Health, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Rouge Valley Health System, Bluewater Health, Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Cambridge Memorial Hospital, Stratford General Hospital and Sudbury Regional Hospital.

About mTuitive: mTuitive, Inc. develops data capture and synoptic reporting software to assist health care professionals in recording clinical findings and maintaining compliance with established protocols and guidelines. Our unique method of capturing structured information provides valuable data for pathology, oncology, and cancer staging applications. Established in 2003, mTuitive, Inc. is based in Massachusetts. See us on the Web at www.mtuitive.com.

1. This material includes the Cancer Checklists and Cancer Protocols which are copyrighted works of the College of American Pathologists. Encoded within the Checklists are portions of the copyrighted work of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization, SNOMED CT. © 1998-2007 IHTSDO. The Cancer Checklists and Cancer Protocols are used with permission of the College of American Pathologists – which has also authorized use of SNOMED CT as encoded in the Checklists.

I was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on the subject of hot new careers for the next decade. See article here.

As I spoke to the reporter, I had my own “aha moment.” I realized that jobs of the future are increasingly interdisciplinary—they span multiple fields. I have begun to call these “nexus careers” because these new professions rely upon a connection or link between previously separate disciplines. A few examples:

1.  User experience design spans the highly technical and creative aspects of product design and engineering as well as behavioral psychology and anthropology to understand more about consumer behavior and how products or systems are actually used.

2.  Healthcare informatics requires some knowledge of information technology, security, data storage or patient records, and how these systems interact with or affect patient care, healthcare outcomes, practice settings, healthcare policy, law, and management.

3.  Sustainability coordinator requires a broad knowledge of the science, economics, and social aspects of sustainability as well as how to apply this knowledge in a particular field (manufacturing, energy, architecture, and so forth).

4.  Paralegal assisting always required knowledge of legal practice and civil procedure, but increasingly paralegal assistants need higher level information technology skills in order to digitize, store, and manage a variety of documents involved in litigation and to electronically file documents with the courts.

Here we see the merging of art and technology, of social sciences and engineering, of policy and science and many others. The great thing about these “nexus careers” is you do not need to “start from scratch” to prepare for them. One can easily enhance existing knowledge and skills and make a bold move into a new and growing field.

Another thing I realized is that many of these newer careers require broad knowledge, critical and abstract thinking skills such as those honed by a traditional liberal arts degree. (So for some of you, instead of downplaying the degree in History or Comparative Literature on your resume, now is the time to emphasize the relevance of all your education.) Many people can learn the technical components of a new area by completing a focused certificate program, adding that to existing degrees and certifications.

Nexus means a connection or link. Personally, I like this trend. We’re moving away from career and skill silos to a looser construct, allowing us to apply all our strengths to today’s significant challenges.

If you enjoyed the WSJ article, you may like another article on Future Jobs in UCLA Magazine, July 2009:  http://www.magazine.ucla.edu/features/future-jobs/

For information on certificate programs in these and other areas, visit the UCLA Extension website at www.uclaextension.edu

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 
Mike Valentine, VP North American Sales
mike.valentine@mtuitive.com
508.771.5800 

-December 8, 2009-

Ross Memorial Hospital chooses mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology to meet CCO standard 

Becomes the sixteenth Ontario hospital to implement xPert for Pathology

Boston, MA – Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay, Ontario, has selected mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology synoptic reporting solution to meet Cancer Care Ontario’s 2008-2009 CAP/CS aligned data standard for pathology reporting.

Standardized pathology reporting increases the availability and consistency of cancer pathology information that is essential for treatment decisions, evaluation, and research.

mTuitive complies with the 2008-2009 CAP/CS aligned data standard developed by Cancer Care Ontario in conjunction with the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Cancer Committee, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Joint Committee on Cancer. The CAP checklists¹ for breast, lung, colorectal, prostate, and endometrium were amended to include the mandatory pathologic collaborative staging elements.

xPert for Pathology interfaces with all available Pathology and Laboratory Information Systems on the market which lends itself to wide use throughout the province.  Other Ontario hospitals utilizing mTuitive’s xPert for Pathology synoptic reporting solution to meet the CCO data standard include Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, The Scarborough Hospital, North York General Hospital, Lakeridge Health, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Rouge Valley Health System, Bluewater Health, Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Cambridge Memorial Hospital, Stratford General Hospital and Sudbury Regional Hospital.

About mTuitive: mTuitive, Inc. develops data capture and synoptic reporting software to assist health care professionals in recording clinical findings and maintaining compliance with established protocols and guidelines. Our unique method of capturing structured information provides valuable data for pathology, oncology, and cancer staging applications. Established in 2003, mTuitive, Inc. is based in Massachusetts. See us on the Web at www.mtuitive.com.

1. This material includes the Cancer Checklists and Cancer Protocols which are copyrighted works of the College of American Pathologists. Encoded within the Checklists are portions of the copyrighted work of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization, SNOMED CT. © 1998-2007 IHTSDO. The Cancer Checklists and Cancer Protocols are used with permission of the College of American Pathologists – which has also authorized use of SNOMED CT as encoded in the Checklists.

The National Library of Medicine wants health care organizations and vendors to test drive its new mapping tool that covers 5,000 standardized clinical terms , to create a standard medical vocabulary to support applications for electronic health records

The Obama administration is distributing more than $19 billion in payments to doctors and hospitals that buy and use digital record systems for patients.

The library released a draft mapping tool that links terms from the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) to the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9). The SNOMED-CT is the terminology used for clinical purposes, while the ICD-9 has terms used for billing and administrative support.

The map was designed with help from SNOMED-CT terms most often used by Kaiser Permanente and the University of Nebraska, to support semi-automated administrative reporting and reimbursement for health care services.

The library wants users to “test drive”’ the map from Dec. 1 through Feb. 1, 2010, and to provide feedback to guide developing related maps. The related maps include mapping of SNOMED-CT to the ICD-Tenth revision, Clinical Modification and Procedure Coding System.

There was some very good news for all of those interested in the EMR world.  A new company has announced that they’ll join the EMR certification world. The Drummond Group is there name and they’ve been doing goverment certification for quite a while. You can hear more about The Drummond Group and EHR certification in this interview with the CEO of Drummond Group.

Related to that, you will find the ONC guidance for EHR certification bodies interesting if you’re looking at EHR certification also.

By TerryAnn Fitzgerald

Back in 1999, the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report called “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” that revealed as many as 98,000 people a year die from preventable medical errors. Rather than laying blame for this “epidemic,” the IOM called for leaders in the healthcare industry to develop solutions that would automate complicated processes and provide medical professionals with checks and balances. 

It was this rallying cry that has led to the emerging field of healthcare informatics, according to Dan Feinberg, director of Northeastern University’s Healthcare Informatics Graduate Program in Boston. “Most processes in the healthcare system are just too much for humans. Some have 20 to 30 steps and if you miss one, someone dies. We need to remake the system and use technology to automate the things that humans just aren’t that good at,” he says.

To that end, Northeastern has developed a targeted graduate program that does cross-training for clinicians and IT professionals. Students from diverse backgrounds, such as pharmaceutical, nursing, insurance, cardiology and IT, come together to learn how to manage complex healthcare informatics projects from planning to deployment.  They study the design and analysis of systems, get introduced to emerging technologies in the marketplace, and dig into the legal and social issues surrounding healthcare informatics, such as patient privacy.

Feinberg says students conclude their program with a Capstone Project that puts their knowledge to work solving real-world problems. The goal is to matriculate professionals that can go back to their workplaces and lead the process change, selection, installment, and ongoing management involved in systems such as electronic medical records or computerized physician order entry.

Having these leaders available is going to be critical as the organizations look to attract and spend the more than $19 billion allotted for healthcare IT within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “A lot of hospitals and private medical companies are hiring healthcare informatics specialists in anticipation of stimulus money,” he says.

And the list of higher education institutions offering degrees in healthcare informatics is growing. For instance, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Northwestern University, the University of Central Florida and the University of Illinois at Chicago all have graduate programs.

What do you think? Will this cross-pollination of clinicians and IT make for a better overall healthcare system? Have you seen healthcare informatics specialists start to crop up in your organization? Let us know.