ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD IMPLEMENTED IN LOUISIANA SCHOOL DISTRICT

Interactive E-Solutions and Health Care Centers in Schools have released a school-based electronic medical record (EMR). Implementation began in January 2008 in Louisiana's East Baton Rouge Parish.

During the past year, Interactive E-Solutions LLC (IES) and Health Care Centers in Schools (HCCS) have worked to develop an EMR that will greatly change the student health record system in schools. Beta testing for the product began in the third quarter of 2007 with a select group of HCCS nurses, health centers, and social workers. Pulse Plus EMR was introduced in East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools in early January.

HCCS is a nonprofit organization that offers all aspects of healthcare to students in the public school system. It currently provides services to 90 schools and more than 50,000 students in East Baton Rouge Parish.

Interactive E-Solutions, a local Baton Rouge IT company, designed Pulse Plus as an EMR program specifically tailored for school-based healthcare. The purpose of an EMR is to facilitate access to patient data by clinical staff at any location; provide standardization of care pathways and protocol; and provide clinical notes, scheduling, and maintenance of relevant medical information. In working with HCCS, IES was able to design a program that not only serves these purposes but also resolves certain paramount problems that were identified by HCCS.

The biggest problem preventing healthcare providers from maintaining records is the number of students who move from school to school. With Pulse Plus, a student's medical record is available to all providers in the network, regardless of which school the student attends.

Pulse Plus provides an automatic verification system that will notify the staff of follow-up visits and other tasks entered into the system. This feature ensures that follow-up visits and necessary care that have been listed on the chart will be attended to and not forgotten or lost.

Obtaining vital information, such as medical logs and records, family history, immunization reports, and emergency contact information, can be performed with one click, but all information is protected by multilevel password security. Pulse Plus can also compile and sort data into an easy-to-read report format that can be printed or transferred electronically to physicians, parents, or other schools.

The current paper-based system requires staff to complete a multitude of different forms to maintain compliance with local, state, and federal regulations, which results in duplicated information, as well as a need for on-site paper storage. Pulse Plus is a Web-based program that offers unlimited database capacity and the ability to back up records to an off-site data facility that ensures constant safety of all student records, which differs from the traditional EMR format.

Pulse Plus is designed to fully integrate all aspects of the school nurse program, school-based health centers, and school mental health programs. Program modules can be revised to quickly reflect the trends and changes in healthcare, an important step in modernizing the way medical information is handled.

For more information please visit http://www.pulseemr.com, http://www.brhccs.org, and http://www.iesolutions.us.

UNBOUND MEDICINE ANNOUNCES BRIGHT FUTURES FOR MOBILE DEVICES

Unbound Medicine recently released Bright Futures for Mobile Devices, offering PDA and smart-phone access to the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) authoritative guidelines for pediatric care.

Now clinicians and trainees at the point-of-care can consult practical, evidence-based AAP recommendations for pediatric healthcare. This powerful mobile reference provides guidance on everything from immunizations and appropriate screening tests to counseling for parents and patients. Bright Futures for Mobile Devices includes both the third edition of Bright Futures Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents and the Bright Futures Pocket Guide. More than 50 experts in pediatrics, family medicine, public health, dentistry and mental health contributed, and the content was reviewed by 1000 health professionals, parents, and child advocates. Clinicians treating infants, children, and adolescents can link directly from age-based visit information in the Pocket Guide into comprehensive strategies for anticipatory guidance and preventive care.

With explicit plans for 31 age-based visits, pediatricians and families can be confident that no aspect of pediatric care is overlooked. Each visit plan enumerates five priorities, including sample questions and discussion points for both parent and child. Unbound Medicine delivers these authoritative guidelines through their award-winning mobile platform. Powerful navigation tools, such as links to related topics and bookmarks, make finding information fast and efficient.

Bright Futures for Mobile Devices is available for Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems. Users can experience Bright Futures for Mobile Devices with a free trial at http://www.unboundmedicine.com/store/bright_futures/trial_.

NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE FEEDING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IMPLEMENTED

Neoteric Technology Ltd has announced that Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Ontario, has successfully deployed Neoteric's LacTrack SafeLx bedside point-of-care milk management system to protect infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In just three months, 159 healthcare providers, including doctors, nurses, dietitians, and feed preparation technicians, used LacTrack SafeLx to verify and correctly order, prepare, distribute, and feed more than 28,000 units of milk to the correct 175 infants.

Neoteric's LacTrack SafeLx is a handheld PDA-based solution that ensures the right infant receives the right breast milk. The system uses two-dimensional bar codes to capture patient, milk, order, and preparation information. Every aspect of the milk collection, storage, and administration process is verified electronically and recorded in a central management system for auditing purposes.

Hospital personnel praised the system's implementation and ease of use, which has led to 100% staff compliance. LacTrack SafeLx manages virtually every aspect of the milk administration process using wireless mobile computers and printers. Both the infants and the milk containers receive bar codes that are scanned throughout the process to ensure the right milk is given to the right baby.

The Sunnybrook NICU in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a 41-bed Level III regional neonatal unit focusing on care of the most fragile preterm infant. For more information, visit http://www.sunnybrook.ca/programs/pg/nicu

For more information about Neoteric's LacTracksystem, visit http://www.neoterictech.com/LacTrack.html

XanEdu, a custom publisher of print, digital, and print+digital hybrid CoursePacks, has been providing digital course materials to the higher education community for 7 years. The publisher works with more than 10,000 instructors to create collections of custom content that include case studies, journals and magazine articles, documents, and faculty-created materials.

During the past year, XanEdu has experienced meaningful growth in the number of customers choosing online delivery of material. It is believed that student demand for online access to course materials is one of the primary factors. XanEdu has an increasing amount of multimedia content in its archive, and academic programs and instructors are beginning to experiment with pairing rich media elements such as video or interactive elements with text-based material. XanEdu's online system eliminates the costs of shipping and packaging extra materials and increases the variety of teaching elements.

IGI Global, a publisher of research on computer science, information technology management, and how information technology affects human activities and interactions, has made available a complete collection of more than 360 case studies in XanEdu's CoursePack offerings. CoursePacks offered by XanEdu provide a natural medium for delivering case studies. The packs contain related materials that the professor may want the student to read, such as background on a topic or information on a company. IGI Global materials, which can be searched by keyword to locate all relevant materials on a topic, provide professors with technological articles for student exploration.

For computer science and information technology courses, IGI Global case studies allow the use of experiential learning, where students examine real-life scenarios and encounter real-world professional situations.

CoursePacks are available through XanEdu's Web site at http://www.xanedu.com and can be built from a course syllabus or selected individually by faculty.

For more information on IGI Global, visit the company's Web site at http://www.igi-global.com.

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