News in brief - Aug. 21, 2006

Roster of certified EMRs expands - Cerner lands contract for British health network

Roster of certified EMRs expands

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology announced July 31 that it certified two additional ambulatory electronic medical records software products, bringing the total number of products that have met its EMR certification criteria for 2006 to 22.

iMedica Patient Relationship Manager 2005, version 5.1, from iMedica Corp. and Praxis Electronic Medical Records, version 3.4, from Infor-Med Corp. are the latest products to receive CCHIT's seal of approval. CCHIT also announced that EMRs from Community Computer Service Inc. and LSS Data Systems had achieved full certification status. Those companies' products had received pre-market conditional approval in mid July, pending verification by CCHIT that they were in use in a clinical setting.

Cerner lands contract for British health network

BT Group announced July 31 that it selected Cerner Corp., a Kansas City, Mo., vendor of hospital and ambulatory information systems, to replace GE Healthcare on a team of vendors that is building part of Britain's $11 billion national health network.

The vendor consortium led by BT Group is one of four consortia that have contracts from Britain's National Health Service to automate five regions across Britain. Cerner, which sells clinical and financial systems to hospitals and physicians, also is a member of a consortium led by Fujitsu Inc., which is implementing a health network for England's southern region.