Customer Experience + Design

The US Department of Agriculture announced yesterday a new icon to replace the food pyramid that has been the image for nutrition in the US for almost two decades. MyPlate provides a more usable image that matches the real-world use for this information. It provides “an uncomplicated symbol to help remind people to think about their […]

I read a report from Modern Healthcare last week, which analyzed Fitch Ratings showing that healthcare organizations that implemented Health IT also had improved quality and higher profitability. The report showed that these investments in Health IT were integral to these quality and profitability achievements. The key word is efficiency. When hospitals use technology they […]

I’m glad to announce that Perficient’s healthcare team has again been ranked in the Healthcare Informatics Top 100 list. This year we ranked 85th. Even though Perficient provides technology consulting services across many industries, our ranking among the best in the healthcare industry is an honor based on the hard work of our team of […]

The overriding theme in healthcare is data integration. Health information exchange, accountable care, interoperability and the merging healthcare industry are forming an environment where electronic patient data is being combined at a record pace. With dreams of a national patient record database, initiatives are brought forth in hopes that we can improve care, decrease costs, […]

Recently I attended Ginny Redish’s Plain language, Web Sites, Documents, and UX: You can do all that!, event hosted by the Usability Professional Association (UPA), DC Chapter. As usual, when I attend dc events like IXDA and other miscellaneous UX meetups, I am usually the anomaly visual designer in the room. The thing that I enjoyed […]

May is National Inventors’ Month. Established in 1998, this celebration of inventors and their contributions to the world had been celebrated in August until this year. The sponsors of the event – Inventors Digest, the Academy of Applied Science, and the United Inventors Association of the USA – decided that May would better coincide with the National Inventors Hall of […]

Health IT and the Doctor-Patient Relationship This is the last in our series of interviews with Dr. Nanette Nuessle. In this interview, we discussed the technologies Dr. Nuessle uses as a concierge physician. This discussion evolved into an discourse over whether healthcare technology helps or hinders the important relationship between patients and physicians. Dr. Nuessle […]

This is an exciting time for healthcare technology. We are literally witnessing a transformation in the way that care is delivered, and technology is taking center stage. I have read a number of reports in just the past week about the rise in telehealth, mobile health, and remote patient monitoring. One report showed that the […]

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) introduced in early 2009 provides reimbursement incentives for Medicare and Medicaid to physician and hospital providers who meet the requirements of implementing “meaningful use” with an electronic medical record (EMR) or electronic health record (EHR) certified system. The reimbursements start in October 2011 and continue through 2015 with […]

Last week, I followed, nearly real time via Twitter, how Sean Power successfully recovered his stolen laptop. The full story is available, but here are a few excerpted tweets from @SeanPower on 13 May 2011: If you’re getting up to speed: Laptop was taken 4 days ago, but I had to fly to Canada the […]

Helping Health IT End Users Adapt to Change This is the second in our series of interviews with Dr. Nanette Nuessle. In this interview, we discussed physician use of healthcare technology and how doctors cope with technology changes in their practice of medicine. What I found most insightful about this particular interview was her description […]

Opinions and posturing on the Accountable Care model started well before the release of the proposed regs over a month ago. However, since their release those of us working within the healthcare industry have been riding the rollercoaster of public sentiment. The enthusiasm around the regs was immediate upon their release. Blogs, Twitter, and online […]