The Cleveland Plain Dealer: A pilot project at the Cleveland Clinic that monitored 250 patients with chronic diseases showed patients were able to increase the number of days between visits. The study used a medical device that shared daily patient data online with doctors and nurses and found that patients better managed their care using the system…

St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE: STJ), a global medical device company, announced several updates to its PressureWire(TM) platform, including a new marketing agreement with Siemens Medical Solutions USA, for the wireless PressureWire(TM) Aeris and the availability of the next-generation of PressureWire(TM) Certus technology, at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) annual meetings…

The offer of federal stimulus funds is spurring Indiana health care providers to convert to electronic medical records, The (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Journal Gazette reports. “Parkview Health and Lutheran Health Network have shortened timelines on scheduled conversions to electronic medical records because of the expected federal rebate. And local companies that develop and sell the technology are speeding up growth, hiring software engineers to create products and sales staff to peddle them.” The stimulus bill, with a provision offering $19…

Consider this T-shirt: It can monitor your heart rate and breathing, analyze your sweat and even cool you off on a hot summer’s day. What about a pillow that monitors your brain waves, or a solar-powered dress that can charge your ipod or MP4 player? This is not science fiction - this is cotton in 2010. Now, the laboratory of Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of Fiber Science and Apparel Design, has developed cotton threads that can conduct electric current as well as a metal wire can, yet remain light and comfortable enough to give a whole new meaning to multi-use garments…

Investigators have developed a new mathematical approach to analyze molecular data derived from complex mixtures of immune cells. This approach, when combined with well-established techniques, readily identifies changes in small samples of human whole blood, and has the potential to distinguish between health and disease states. Led by Mark Davis, Ph.D., and Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, Calif…

With the new health care IT technology already in use, preparation for the accompanying consequences should be on every family’s mind, advises Martine Ehrenclou, author of the multiple award-winning, self-help guide Critical Conditions: The Essential Hospital Guide To Get Your Loved One Out Alive (Lemon Grove Press). The FDA has received 260 reports in the last two years submitted voluntarily about health IT malfunctions that had the potential to cause harm to patients, including reports of 44 injuries and six deaths…

Online social networks could help with communications and recovery for people with disabilities following major natural disasters, or even terrorist attack, according to a research paper in the International Journal of Emergency Management. In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, other natural disasters, and even technological emergencies it has become obvious that there is a serious need for disaster and emergency preparedness for people with disabilities…

It is not enough to have a Braille keyboard or a computer that speaks. Until Internet can better adapt to their needs, disabled persons will continue to have a big disadvantage with respect to other users. With his PhD thesis, researcher Mr Markel Vigo aimed to smooth out this complicated relationship. On the one hand, he tested a system that facilitates creating a more personalised Internet for the disabled and, on the other, devised innovative techniques for experts in adapting web pages…

The American Medical Association has made deals with computer retailer Dell, and Ingenix, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, to “help physicians adopt and implement electronic health records”, the Chicago Tribune reports. The terms of the deals were not released, but one part of the arrangement with Ingenix will be to offer doctors a Web-based medical record system called CareTracker…

“The race to streamline online access to medical records turned into a stampede this week as leading high-tech vendors trumpeted new initiatives at the Health Information and Management Systems Society” (HIMSS) trade show in Atlanta,” InternetNews.com/Datamation reports, adding that Dell, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others are touting “new and pending deals designed to help consumers, doctors and hospital move to more easily accessible, but also secure, medical histories and information online” (Needle, 3/1)…