Medco escapes logic bomb

A former systems administrator at Medco Health Solutions has pleaded guilty to writing and planting malicious code that could have crippled a network that maintains customer healthcare information, reports Information Week.

Yung-Hsun Lin, of Montville, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Newark, to the charge of transmitting code that would cause damage to a protected computer. He told the court he planted the logic bomb when he suspected he was going to be laid off.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, but the plea deal sets a guideline of 30 to 37 months. The judge, who will levy the sentence on 8 January, is not bound to the guidelines.

Transax's susidiary, Medlink, has signed a contract to provide healthcare connectivity services to Caixa Cubatao, a regional municipality in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, says Computer Business Review.

Luiz Carlos Oliveira, superintendent at Caixa Cubatao, said: "We chose Medlink as the connectivity solutions provider because it fulfils expectations concerning integration between the procedures and billing authorisation online and in real-time".

Medlink also reduces the operational costs for Caixa Cubatao and eliminates rejection of claims to medical providers. Caixa Cubatao will adopt the entire suite of Medlink's solutions, from point of sale to Web solutions.

Health and human services secretary Mike Leavitt released the first department-wide report on the goal of personalised healthcare on 19 September, says Healthcare IT News.

The report presents a long-range plan for achieving more individualised treatment for patients, specifically by using genetic information and healthcare IT.

The Mayo Clinic in the US is working with IBM on a data warehouse that contains clinical and genomic data. A Web-enabled user interface allows authorised clinicians and researchers to access unprecedented amounts of patient information, including demographic, diagnostic, physiological and genomic data.