Healthcare equipment stocks rise

Shares of healthcare equipment companies traded higher on Monday, as US president-elect Barack Obama emphasised new technologies as part of a proposed economic stimulus package over the weekend, reports CNN Money.

As part of the plan, Obama said he will "make sure that every doctor's office and hospital in this country is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records" to reduce costs and eliminate mistakes.

Obama discussed the technology in a radio address Saturday and reiterated the comments during a Sunday interview. In a client note, Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Muken said the remarks show healthcare IT is "on the front burner" for Obama's incoming administration.

George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, a US-based integrated managed care organisation, delivered an opening keynote address at the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Conference, held in Washington, DC, this week, states Market Watch.

In: "Changing the shape of healthcare: Groundbreaking innovations and their impact on healthcare delivery", Halvorson outlined a vision for a healthcare system where data and connectivity enable patient-centred care.

"Goal number one of healthcare reform should be to have a healthcare infrastructure that contains all of the data about all of the patients, all of the time. That functionality is needed to fuel medical advances,” Halvorson said.

Merge Healthcare, a provider of medical imaging solutions, has released version 3.0 of Cedara xPipe, a software toolkit that fully automates the image processing tasks performed by x-ray consoles, says CBR Online.

These tasks ensure x-ray images are of good quality before the patient leaves the room. Cedara xPipe eliminates many of the manual tasks performed to achieve this.

The software was designed in modules that automate either individual tasks or multiple tasks in a sequence. At the heart of xPipe is the Cedara Image Enhancement module, which targets specific noise patterns introduced by the imaging device.