Lines of buyers, a burgeoning bunch of app announcements...the iPad has arrived, alright. Judging from a recent discussion on the AMDIS listserv board, its already in your facility and undergoing assessment by your peers. Survey respondents in CMIO's Web poll last month were evenly split with regard to their iPad purchase plans, but that was before Apples gadget hit the streets. Now that its here, the level of early interest among health IT professionals is high. 

In evaluating the accuracy of radiography of the hip and pelvis in patients arriving in the emergency department (ED), researchers from the department of radiology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., found that radiography presented poor sensitivity and specificity findings in patients with pain or suspected trauma around these structures.

Proponents of government support for expanding health IT point to tremendous benefits for the U.S. healthcare system. However, although many experts discuss the hoped-for benefits of health IT, formal evaluation and evidence regarding successful implementation is lacking, according a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is one year old, its time to ask if the federal government has gotten IT right, according to an editorial in the April issue of HealthAffairs.

One potential benefit of the rapidly accumulating databases of healthcare information is the ability to make unprecedented links between genomic data and clinical medicine, according to a study published by Cell Press in the April issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

American Career College will offer an associate of occupational science degree in health IT at its Anaheim, Calif., campus beginning in May. The degree is designed to prepare students to play a role in maintaining, collecting and analyzing the data for doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers.

Family medicine needs influential, aggressive allies, according to a commentary by Mary Nolan Hall, MD, and Jerry Kruse, MD, along with the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, that was published in the January/February edition of Annals of Family Medicine.

The New England HIMSS Public Policy Forum earlier this week brought health IT representatives from six states to Massachusettswidely cited for its universal health insurance law, now roughly three years old. In addition to providing state-by-state reports on health IT, the conference offered speakers and attendees a chance to help figure out what the national healthcare reform legislation might mean on a local level.