iPhone app tracks swine flu
A free iPhone app called 'outbreaks near me' is designed to help users track and report oubreaks of swine flu and other infectious diseases, reports Computerworld.
Researchers at Children's Hospital in Boston built the application with the MIT Media Lab and with support from Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the search engine company. The application relies on information gathered on the HealthMap Web site.
With the app, iPhone users can get information on outbreaks of a disease in their area. They can also be notified on the device or by e-mail when new outbreaks are reported nearby or when the user enters an area where outbreaks have been reported.
Partnership delivers healthcare BI
Netezza and Fuzzy Logix have formed a healthcare alliance that will use Netezza's OnStream Analytics processing and Fuzzy Logix's DB Lytix to ramp up the delivery and spread of healthcare knowledge to at least 2 200 US hospitals and 63 000 other healthcare sites, states TMCnet.
“We've been using Netezza's appliances since 2004 and have seen performance gains of 10 times to 100 times over other platforms. By leveraging OnStream Analytics processing via DB Lytix, we believe that we will once again experience another similar boost in performance,” says Chris Stewart, senior architect of Premier.
Officials claimed that by leveraging high performance analytics, Premier will empower their members to transform healthcare delivery while continuing to reduce healthcare costs.
Online healthcare cost estimator unveiled
With consumers responsible for a larger portion of their healthcare costs than ever before, a new tool on the Geisinger Web site makes it easier to estimate the cost of care before treatment, says ChiroEco.
In addition, the Web-based tool makes it possible for consumers to estimate how their benefits apply to a specific service and how much they will owe out of pocket.
Barbara Tapscott, vice-president of revenue services at Geisinger, said she is pleased that her department is able to provide easy-to-access cost estimates.
Share