InternetOnline Health Records Urged (PC World)

PC World - The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday.

The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday. U.S. health-care providers continue to make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services Inc. The U.S. health-care system is failing patients "despite the fact we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much better job." About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin, speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition. U.S. residents should have a "sense of outrage" when confronted with these prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system's record to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005 holiday shopping season. "I use Amazon a lot-- I have never gotten the wrong book," he said. "We can't seem to get the pills from the pharmacy in the basement to Mrs. Smith in room 631 correctly. This is not... [ Read more on www.yahoo.com ]

InternetAT&T scales back St. Louis Wi-Fi plan (AP)

AP - AT&T Inc. has scaled back its plan to blanket the city's 62 square miles with Wi-Fi signals, the wireless Internet service now found in airports and coffee shops.

InternetWeb Apps Won't Kill the Desktop, Microsoft Says (PC World)

PC World - A top Microsoft Corp. executive defended desktop application software, the source of the company's revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday that even services-based companies such as Google Inc. still need it.