Last week, during the fever pitch surrounding the announcement of Apple’s iPad tablet, Software Advice surveyed 178 physicians, nurses, medical students and healthcare IT professionals about what the healthcare industry’s ideal tablet would look like. This isn’t our first time talking tablets and healthcare. In April of last year, we wondered if the Apple tablet would become the ideal device to run electronic health record (EMR) software.

On December 30, 2009, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released documents shedding light on what physicians and hospitals must do to qualify for electronic health records (EHR) incentive payments under the HITECH Act. To qualify for incentives, physicians and hospitals must be using “certified EHR technology” in a “meaningful manner.”

Physician practices around the country are asking us: “Should I wait for the government to finalize its definitions of ‘meaningful use’ and ‘certified EHR technology’ before I purchase electronic health record (EHR) software?”

Our answer: No.

Because we’re obsessed with medical blogs here at Software Advice, we decided to create a FREE RSS widget of our 25 favorite medical blogs.

Choose your color scheme and number of posts to display below and simply cut and paste the code into your site. To see what the widget looks like, click Preview next to each one.

In case you haven’t heard (or aren’t obsessively following IT trends like we are), the great trend in software is the evolution from traditional “on-premises” software (e.g. client/server software installed at the office) to Software as a Service (SaaS) (i.e. web-based applications that are managed in the vendors’ data center and accessed “on-demand” through a web browser).

(AUSTIN, Texas – July 31, 2009) Software Advice, a free online resource for software buyers, has moved its headquarters from San Francisco, CA, to Austin, TX.

Founded in 2005, Software Advice matches technology buyers with the right software for their organization. The company serves a range of vertical markets, including the construction, medical, property management

The smartphone industry is on fire. iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre and Google are all in the hunt for dominance. We want to know one thing: Which phone will become the device of choice for healthcare providers?

Please take our short survey and forward it on to your friends and colleagues. If you’d like to be notified by e-mail about our survey results, please enter your e-mail address in the form below.

Running a medical practice is as much about running a business as providing health care. Physicians often face the same challenges of any business owner: managing cash flow, keeping accurate “customer” accounts and processing invoices. In healthcare, challenges are multiplied as providers must meet strict government and insurance requirements. Failure to comply can result in rejected claims, ultimately affecting cash flow.

Rumors of a Mac Tablet have been circulating around the Apple blogosphere for the past few months. While speculation escalates about the opportunities for an “iTablet” in the consumer market, we can’t help but muse on its applicability to medical records.

There is a seemingly endless amount of medical applications that could be developed for a Mac Tablet.

With the Economic Stimulus Bill signed and available to subsidize EHR purchases (for more information see “The Stimulus Bill and Meaningful Use of Qualified EHRs/EMRs“), we are seeing a dramatic increase in electronic health records (EHR) buyer interest. Assuming these buyers make use of the stimulus subsidy to buy an EHR, we expect to see a lot of EHR failures over the next couple years.

Why are some physicians still fearful of web-based electronic medical records (EMRs) when most of them are comfortable using web banking and e-commerce sites?

Many physicians allow all of their personal financial information to be transmitted over the Internet – including actionable credit card data – but fear using the same methods for managing their patient records.

Should you implement an EMR or an EHR? Do you know the difference? Is there a difference?

In theory, and by definition, there is a difference and it should play into any provider’s clinical software selection. At the same time, marketing messages and technical terminology have clouded provider’s understanding of the two software definitions.

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model of deploying software has come of age and is gaining traction in medical practices. Physicians are adopting this Internet-centric model to offload the burden of server maintenance and data backup, while expanding access to their system and provide their staff with an intuitive user interface. While some physicians might remain skeptical of new technology and question a third-party’s ability to safeguard patient data, many of the early challenges with SaaS have been overcome.

Your degree is in medicine, not computer science. Why then are so many physicians finding themselves focused on software these days? Government, payers and market forces are all pushing physicians to consider an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) strategy. As if practicing medicine weren’t challenge enough, now you need to adopt a new layer of technology infrastructure…