BOSTON--Most stakeholders agree that the current U.S. model of healthcare is unsustainable, said keynote speaker Joseph Smith, MD, PhD, chief medical and science officer at West Wireless Health Institute in La Jolla, Calif., during his remarks at the World Congress Second Annual Leadership Summit on mHealth July 29.

PHILADELPHIA--When Hurricane Ike hit Galveston, Texas, in 2008, Collin D. Brack, MBA, was ready. Earlier in the year, he and his IT colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston underwent disaster preparedness, which allowed him to change a few processes. Those changes enabled his crew to restore IT functionality within three to four days at a remote site after Ike's rains had knocked them out.

PHILADELPHIA--A new mathematical model to better pinpoint tumor location and thereby reduce radiation exposure uses data on how tumor motion has changed during a course of radiation treatment, along with real-time tumor images to calculate the confidence physicists can have about an instantaneous tumor position estimate. The research was presented July 21 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

PHILADELPHIA—What began as single-slice CT scanning has now evolved into dynamic volume scanning, utilizing as many as 320 detectors. The possibilities for wide-area detector technology include consistently low radiation exposure for coronary CT angiography (CCTA), as well as myocardial perfusion imaging, kinetic opacification slopes that distinguish between normal and diseased arteries and vascular profiling, according to Frank Rybicki, MD, PhD, who spoke July 21 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

A reconstruction algorithm based on graphic processing unit platforms originally designed for 3D video games could yield a 10-fold reduction in the amount of radiation patients receive during cone beam CT scans, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) on July 21.

PHILADELPHIA—While most cancer therapies deliver a uniform amount of radiation to the tumor as a whole, cancer masses are not homogenous. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, discovered that most of the head and neck tumors in their study contained three statistically different subpopulations with distinct profiles, and they presented the study July 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

PHILADELPHIA—CT perfusion assessment of rectal cancer after hypofractionated radiotherapy correlated well with FDG-PET assessment and showed an increased tumor perfusion. Researchers suggest the increased vascularity could improve the bioavailability of cytotoxic agents in rectal tumors, often administered early after radiotherapy treatment, according to a poster presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

PHILADELPHIA—Radiation scatter about the patient during abdominal fluoroscopic procedures is not isotropic, and staff would receive reduced dose if positioned at the head or feet, rather than laterally, according to a study presented July 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

A new image-processing algorithm, based on the Gradient Adaptive Bilateral fIItration (GABI) algorithm, can help radiologists lower radiation dose in perfusion CT scanning, delivering as much as a 20-fold reduction with no disadvantage to perfusion information and image quality compared to a full dose image acquisition, according to a study presented at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in Philadelphia on July 20.

PHILADELPHIA—Six years ago, Jim Donnelly was told the cancer on his tongue and larynx needed to be surgically removed. Not accepting that opinion, Donnelly, a professor of business at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, decided to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. As was evident by the standing ovation following his address at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), Donnelly has not lost his ability to speak, nor his sense of humor.

Computer-aided analysis (CAA) showed high sensitivity and high negative predictive value for the evaluation of significant coronary artery disease (CAD) on 64-slice cardiovascular CT angiography (CCTA) across three populations with differing CAD prevalence, suggesting that CAA could be used in clinical practice, based on a study presented this week at the fifth annual meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT).

Three different methods—cone-beam CT, breast MRI and dual-energy mammography— have proved accurate for measuring breast density, according to two post-mortem studies presented Sunday at the 52nd annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in Philadelphia.

Double non-coplanar-intensity modulated arc therapy (NC-IMAT) can improve treatment for pediatric posterior fossa tumors compared to NC-IMRT, and it may provide dose reduction to critical structures and surrounding tissue, according to a study presented at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in Philadelphia on July 18.

OJAI, Calif.--Probably no one goes to medical school intent on becoming a CMIO, said Geeta Nayyar, MD, MBA, assistant clinical professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., during a discussion at the AMDIS Physician-Computer Symposium earlier this week. However, the interest is there and must be cultivated to meet the growing demand for medical informatics skills, she said.

OJAI, Calif.–The goal was to make meaningful use ambitious, but achievable, said Farzad Mostashari, senior advisor for policy and programming at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), who clarified several points and answered many questions about meaningful use at the AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium Thursday.

OJAI, Calif. –CPOE implementation in any facility is challenging, but CMIOs from two pediatric hospitals said unintended consequences can be anticipated and mitigated or avoided altogether. At the AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium yesterday, James Levin, MD, PhD, CMIO of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of the UPMC, and Christopher Longhurst, MD, CMIO of Lucile Packard Hospital in Stanford, Calif., talked about implementation and its results at their facilities.

OJAI, Calif.—A first look at the 864-page final rule for Meaningful Use and EHR Certification shows that policymakers “listened and responded” to some physicians’ concerns, said speakers Pat Wise, RN, vice president of healthcare information systems at HIMSS, and Michael Zaroukian, MD, PhD, CMIO and associate professor of medicine at Michigan State University, during a presentation at the annual AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium Wednesday.

To move the Nationwide Health Information Exchange (NHIN) from a set of broad policies to production systems, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) must translate strategy into operational actions, according to Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, acting director of the Office of Interoperability and Standards at ONC. Fridsma made his comments during a presentation with Arien Malec, coordinator for the NHIN Direct, ONC.

In welcoming individuals to the 2014 environment, setting a framework for standards that will abbreviate the enrollment process will facilitate development of a simpler process for applicants, according to an update by the HIT Policy & Standards Committees Enrollment Workgroup on June 30.

More than 5,100 physicians, technologists and members of the molecular imaging and nuclear medicine communities gathered in Salt Lake City for SNM's 57th annual meeting last week which featured more than 1,400 scientific papers that represented research and developments worldwide in molecular imaging and nuclear medicine.