How Can Computer Viruses Affect Your Medical Practice?

As healthcare becomes increasingly dependent on information technology, system breakdowns due to viruses, worms and other malware can potentially stall the entire working of your practice. This article aims to discuss how practitioners can protect their computers against viruses to ensure the safety and confidentiality of their data systems. What are Computer Viruses? A virus is simply a software program or a piece of code that is developed to spread and break into computer systems to consume available memory, corrupt or erase data and eventually cause the system to stop working.  There are many types of malware and computer viruses and they vary in characteristics, disguises and potency to breach security and spread across networks.  Computer viruses are nowadays commonly spread...

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Difference Between Medical Billing Software and EMR

Medical billing and EMR software systems are often designed to have overlapping features that improve the functionality and usability of the systems in order to make them a “one-stop-solution” for a practice’s medical IT needs. As a result, medical billing software and EMRs end up being interchangeably used discounting the primary objectives of each of the systems. Medical Billing Software vs. EMR Many EMR companies are going the whole way to provide doctors with a single, comprehensive solution that will help them achieve Meaningful Use by incorporating crucial features like clinical notes, patient information and history, medication/prescription/drug allergies, diagnosis/treatments/procedures, patient scheduling, appointment reminders, e-prescribing, electronically available results, scans...

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Cloud Computing in Healthcare

This article aims to discuss aspects of cloud computing that are relevant to the healthcare industry and can be applied by doctors to improve their practice. What Should Doctors Know About Cloud Computing? There is a sea of information available on the internet about cloud computing and how it works. As a doctor with limited interest in information technology, understanding all that jargon (most of which may not even be directly related to your work and computing requirements) can be quite intimidating and time consuming. Simply put, the cloud is a set of hardware, networks, storage, services and interfaces that are equipped to provide computing power, infrastructure, applications, software, business processes and storage – in short, all your computing needs, as a service wherever and whenever...

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How Does Email Help You As A Doctor?

Email or electronic mailing has revolutionized business communication. The incentivization of technology in the healthcare industry coupled with its growing inclination towards consumerism and strong patient-doctor relationships has made it necessary for doctors and healthcare professionals to utilize this channel of communication to improve the quality and reach of their practice. However, even though a majority of doctors do own personal email accounts, not many are comfortable using the email for regular, professional correspondence. Why Should Doctors Use Email? Doctors are busy people. Email is fast, easy to manage and allows for instant response. As emails can be read on PCs, tablets, smartphones and practically any device with web access in your clinic, home or while commuting, incorporating...

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How Technology Can Improve The Work Life Balance For A Physician

Doctors and healthcare professionals are not strangers to poor work life balance. A very strong culture surrounds this industry that perceives a doctor wishing to lead a healthy personal life as a sign of weakness.  It is not uncommon to see doctors resign to the demands of the job and the medical culture system, leading to unhealthy suppression of their personal goals and requirements. No doubt that for some medical professionals, the passion for work overrides the stress and the burning out, but for others, constantly trying to cope with the unwritten but powerful psychological contract of “if you cannot work 18 hours a day and seven days a week, you don’t belong here” can be very overwhelming. It’s usually only a matter of time until physicians begin to deal with ill health, depression,...

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Using Skype To Help Your Practice

What is Skype? Skype is a software program that allows its users to make voice and video calls between computers (including tablets, smartphones with web access) and voice calls from computers to regular telephones that are not connected to the internet, anywhere in the world. Some of their services are free to use while some are available for a fee.  What makes Skype such a valuable asset to medical practice is its videoconferencing tool. Gaining widespread adoption in the healthcare industry, this tool has the potential to transform the process and practice of medicine for physicians as well as patients. Skype in Healthcare Practitioners...

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