Saint John, Canada - When the Canadian government set up the not-for-profit Canada Health Infoway to lead the development of electronic health records across the country, the provinces jumped at the chance to get involved.

The idea was to support a safer, more efficient healthcare system, one that would reduce wait times, increase patient participation in health care, better manage chronic diseases, and improve access to care in remote and rural communities. The not-for-profit, federally funded organization jointly invests with every province and territory to accelerate the development and adoption of electronic health record projects in Canada.

According to Infoway, the goal of an electronic health record system is to tie together a patient's health information from numerous systems to provide one coherent record for an authorized healthcare provider. Whether the information flows from a doctor's office, clinic, hospital or pharmacy, it will appear in a structured format on the record. That way, anyone who has authorization to view it has a complete and accurate picture.

That's precisely the idea behind a remote access solution called Role Oriented Access Management (ROAM), a proprietary technology developed by AnyWare Group of Saint John , New Brunswick . Today, more than 60 hospitals throughout North America have implemented ROAM to deliver applications and information to users based on their role — anytime, anywhere — through a simple Internet connection and Web browser.

ROAM has expanded the capabilities for today's healthcare organizations. By standardizing on a single platform, hospitals are able to share applications and patient files with other regional partners and also share capital costs for new IT systems. ROAM enables EMR and HIS integration for consistent data between the primary care physician and the regional health systems. Because information is captured electronically, physicians can input information from any location for reduced coding and data entry errors.

Christine Carr, the consulate's Trade Commissioner for Technology in Boston, says:

"New England is preeminent for the work being carried out in healthcare technology innovation due to the convergence of investment, research and technology resources in the region. Companies such as AnyWare Group are positively impacting Canada 's healthcare sector, and these solutions can provide models and stimulation for innovation and collaboration between U.S. and Canadian companies."

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 23 - UNIVAL, Inc., a healthcare company that delivers a variety of integrated healthcare services, announced that it has connected the UNIVAL application to the Microsoft HealthVault platform. HealthVault lets consumers collect, store, and share health information online. The UNIVAL application, called yourHealth™, allows HealthVault users to send paper medical records and have expert nurses quickly and accurately convert them to a format that can be imported into their HealthVault profile.

RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 23 -- Technology is a critical topic when discussing the continuum of care for a patient, especially in the hospital setting where facilities are expecting to see increases in Joint Commission compliance standards.

The TIGR User Conference had executives from more than 50 of the nation's leading hospitals attend to learn more about maximizing interactive patient education systems in their daily workflow. The sessions focused on enabling attendees to develop and deliver solutions that leverage the full capabilities of the interactive on-demand systems.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - URAC's Board of Directors has approved comprehensive revisions to nine of the organization's health care management accreditation programs.

The new standards support consumer empowerment through an emphasis on health care literacy. The Health Standards Committee met numerous times to ensure that this and other major health care policy issues were addressed in the revised standards, and consulted focus groups that included industry experts and other stakeholders.

CITRUS HEIGHTS, Calif., Aug. 4 - Lake Pointe Medical Center announced today that it has installed its new Smart card-based patient access system called "LifeMed(TM)" at the hospital.

The LifeMed(TM) Smart card software system has been developed for hospitals to quickly and accurately identify patients and help manage them through the admissions process. Patients with the Smart card will have the ability to view and contribute to their overall medical records, giving the provider a more complete medical picture.