E-prescribing thriving

Submitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 09:07.

Like Katrin Verclas said, health is big.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123249533946000191.html
THE INFORMED PATIENT - JANUARY 21, 2009
Incentives Push More Doctors to E-Prescribe
Electronic Systems Shown to Reduce Dangerous Errors; A Cure for Poor Penmanship
By LAURA LANDRO

With a host of new incentives, doctors are finally beginning to scrap pen and paper in favor of electronic prescriptions.

Medicare this month began paying doctors a bonus if they switch their patients over to e-prescribing. Some private health plans also have begun offering extra payments along with free equipment, such as digital handheld devices. And a coalition of technology companies is giving doctors free software to encourage them to ditch their paper prescription pads. As a result, the number of physicians prescribing medicines electronically has more than doubled in the past year to about 70,000, or about 12% of all office-based doctors.

E-prescribing allows doctors to transmit prescriptions via a secure Internet network directly to pharmacies using an office or laptop computer or a digital handheld device. >> Read further --