IBM presents virtual healthcare conference

IBM announced its SimuLive Healthcare & Life Sciences Virtual Conference, on 21 September.

Among the featured presenters will be Robert A Tulio, president of RAM Technologies. Tulio will present a session on "Consumer-directed healthcare and the implications for claims management". The virtual conference will be followed by a live question and answer session.

IBM has selected four leading independent software vendors from among its healthcare and life sciences partners to participate in this virtual conference. RAM Technologies was chosen for its technological advancements in claims management and back office administration for organisations in the payer segment of the healthcare industry. Additional IBM partners selected to participate in the SimuLive event include Avaya, Cerner and Misys.

A health-care search engine has gone live that allows people to narrow searches based on personal characteristics and filter for information such as symptoms and treatments, reports CNET news.com.

The search engine dubbed Healia lets users personalise their searches based on their gender, age, ethnicity and other factors. It also automatically generates contextual filters that cluster results under headings like "prevention" and "side effects".

Healia doesn`t crawl the entire Web for results, only health-related sites that have been "independently vetted by trusted third-party organisations", said Tom Eng, Healia founder and chief architect.

Noticias.info reports millions of euros could be saved annually in the Netherlands by using mobile telephone services in the healthcare sector. Not only that, but it would also provide better care for patients and increase productivity.

These are some of the conclusions reached in a study by the Imperial College in London, commissioned by Vodafone to investigate the role of mobile telephones to make healthcare more accessible and efficient. The findings were presented today to members of parliament and healthcare administrators in the Netherlands.

Using the results of the report on healthcare in England, Theo van der Ven, chairman of the European Institute for Healthcare Information, examined mobile telephony possibilities for the healthcare sector in the Netherlands.