Intel invests in healthcare tools

Intel has started a digital health group that is investing heavily in IT tools that can help cut healthcare costs and make the lives of doctors and patients easier.

Louis Burns, head of the group, said Intel has been encouraged by the results of a trial, where it tested computers with tablet displays among the nursing staff.

The hope is to save doctors and nurses an hour a day, reports Mercury News.

Wisconsin Technology Network reports that those hoping for health IT to have a moderating influence on healthcare premiums will have to wait a while longer, according to the head of an influential health information management organisation.

Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, said implementing electronic health records and improving interoperability between facilities remain high IT priorities, but adoption rates in the US remain low compared to those in Europe.

Although the use of e-mail and other Internet-based and computerised information resources has become routine in most professions, a survey of physicians across the US has found that fewer than half of them incorporate these common technologies into routine patient practice, EurikAlert reports.

"We are investing tens of billions of dollars in health IT nationally, yet the medical profession has been very slow to adopt these tools for clinical care," says Richard Grant, MD, MPH, of the MGH Division of General Medicine, the paper`s lead author.

"We were shocked at the very low rate of basic IT use, particularly among solo-practice and non-academic physicians. I`m sure that the vast majority of them personally use e-mail and the Internet, but most do not have effective ways to integrate these tools into clinical practice."