icanPRESCRIBE: "icanPRESCRIBE is a decision-support

icanPRESCRIBE: "icanPRESCRIBE is a decision-support system that provides interactive, individualized consultation to clinicians for selecting and prescribing antibiotic therapy. This program will be available online as a web-based system, accessible with standard PC Internet browsers or handheld wireless personal digital assistant devices." icaninc website. I registered for the 2 week trial of icanprevent, which is a news source and set of resources for infection control personnel. It's a subscription service for which they charge $20. Not much there for practicing physicians. Don't bother signing up. icanPRESCRIBE remains vaporware ... slated for "late2000" release. We'll check back then, eh?

Speaking of checking back later, healinx has redesigned their website. It is much improved. Healinx is on the right track here .. but it's still too inconvenient for docs to use on a regluar basis ... even geeks like me don't log in to healinx every day to see if there is "e-communication" waiting from my patients. Despite HIPAA and state laws ... I think that many docs will continue to use e-mail to communicate with patients until some physician reveals the GC result to a spouse using a shared e-mail account unknowingly ... this will get headlines and lawyers buzzing .. then we'll all flock to healinx etc.