Dr. Laffel explains the basics of the HITECH incentives for Electronic Health Record adoption under the ARRA stimulus plan. In part 1, he covers the basics about HITECH, the incentives and “Meaningful Use.”

HITECH Part 2: Meaningful Use Steps and the EHR Incentive Timeline

Learn what your medical practice needs to do to demonstrate “Meaningful Use” and receive $44,000+ in HITECH stimulus incentives. In part 2 of the HITECH series, Dr. Laffel goes into more details about the HITECH timeline.

HITECH Part 3: The EMR Certification Process and Next Steps

In part 3 of this series, Dr. Laffel explains how Electronic Health Record systems will be certified for “Meaningful Use” and what role CCHIT may play in the process. Plus, a few next steps that your practice should consider to prepare now for the $44,000 incentives.

HITECH Part 4: Practice Fusion, Your Practice and EMR Incentives

We conclude our HITECH series with an explanation of Practice Fusion’s EHR certification guarantee and what our team can do to help your practice qualify for incentives. Dr. Laffel provides tips for next steps as you prepare for EHR adoption.

Practice Fusion EHR Features:

Practice Fusion PHR Patient Video (www.patientfusion.com):

Practice Fusion PHR Enrollment Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Scheduler Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Charting Demo:

Practice Fusion Patient Management:

Practice Fusion Users Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Patient Import Tutorial:

Practice Fusion and Kareo Integration:

Practice Fusion Clipboard Tutorial:

Practice Fusion E-Prescribing Tutorial:

Practice Fusion E-Prescribing Advanced Tutorial

Practice Fusion Allergy Management Tutorial

Practice Fusion Bio-Reference Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Secure Messaging Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Vaccine and Immunization Management:

Practice Fusion H1N1 Candidacy, Prevention, and Management:

Practice Fusion Medication Management Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Diagnosis Management Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Document Management Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Facility Management Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Template Management Tutorial:

Practice Fusion Quest Diagnostics Integration Tutorial:

Practice Fusion LabCorp Integration Tutorial:

Yesterday’s announcement by Steve Jobs was exciting to say the least. For anyone looking for a portable browser, reader, and multimedia device, the iPad is a game-changer. It also promises to be extremely handy for managing personal data like contacts, calendaring, and email. However, if what you need is a portable ‘primary’ business device, this will likely not be it.

The iPad’s stand-out features are its multi-touch screen, extremely light weight (a little over a pound), all-day battery, and low price ($499 to start). It does everything you can currently do on an iPod Touch but on a 9.7 inch screen. For games, reading an e-book, or surfing the Web and emailing from your favorite coffee shop the iPad is almost untouchable (pardon the pun) except for not supporting Flash or Silverlight which knocks out a lot of Web content. For students, scientists, artists, and business professionals, the iPad lacks the tools for serious data entry. The on-screen keyboard is not a full QWERTY and is too small and uncomfortable to use for more than just a few minutes. The iPad also does not come with a stylus and does not support handwriting recognition. This kills any extended note-taking for meetings and classes. While Steve Jobs touted the iWorks business applications one wonders how you can seriously work on a spreadsheet with just your fingers. To address the problem of losing significant screen real estate when the keyboard is launched Apple announced a plug-in external keyboard. However the iPad does not support the use of an external monitor and amazingly the iPad does not have any USB ports. Expandability is limited to a dock for the keyboard and a SIM card tray – that’s it. Also incredible is the lack of a built-in video camera so video conferencing is out of the question.

The iPad comes with a 1 GHz processor, 64 GB flash memory, and the iPhone’s operating system. As you can see this is not really a Tablet PC or a Slate PC but a large handheld device that is extremely powerful for its niche. Having no stylus, no ports to speak of, no expandable memory, no Adobe Flash support, and no way to work on more than one application at a time, means this device is impractical for real-world business applications. So don’t trash your laptop, Netbook, or Tablet PC just yet. However if Apple includes the aforementioned features in future versions of the iPad watch out!

The Core 2 Duo has between 2 and 6 MB cache. The Pentium Dual Core line only has 1 MB cache. By the way, each processor has an Intel number, like e5200 or e7500, so you can look up the specs online. Is it worth shelling out a couple hundred bucks for more MB cache? If you know how to over clock your processor, or you are using the PC for home and small office use, the answer is no. The Pentium Dual Core will be just fine. However, for each MB of cache you probably increase system responsiveness by 10%. That means if you spend another $200 for a Core 2 Duo with 2 MB cache you will likely not feel the difference in performance. You are going to spend considerably more for 6 MB cache.  Is it worth it? For most folks it isn’t.

Will Smith (not the actor) is the gentleman in the video and the editor of Maximum PC. They shot this video demonstration to show people how to build a killer PC, one step at a time. It’s really a great reference for beginners and experts alike. This video was created for viewing by attendees of Comic-Con 2009.

With so much competition in the PC marketplace it is generally less-expensive to buy a built PC than to build your own. Why? If you are looking to use a PC for basic business, or for home/student use, you simply can’t buy the pieces needed to build a PC for what you can buy a budget PC for these days. Of course if you are in the market for a gaming PC, or other high-end unit, you can actually save a little money on parts if you know what you are doing. However, once you factor in time, you will probably still be better off buying a built unit, that is, if you can find one that meats your specs.

On-the-other-hand building your own PC has value in itself. If you enjoy puzzles and tinkering the fun and excitement of building your own hotrod will be worth it. Another approach is to buy an expandable PC with the basic features you want and then to add components as you wish. This can save you money if, for example, the PC is expandable to 16 GB of RAM but you buy it with only 2 GB. Manufacturer RAM upgrades are usually much more expensive than it would be for you to buy and install your RAM after purchase. This may also be true of larger secondary hard drives.

In the final analysis you will usually do better just shopping around for the best deal. If you want to latest and greatest, you know what you are doing, and you enjoy the process, then building your own is the way to go.

This article is based on input from PC users here.

Now we show you the new and best keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7. Take a look, learn, and enjoy!

In this second video we explain how you can solve browser display problems and we provide some tips, tricks, and valuable resources for webmasters, web developers, and web designers. If your site is not working just right you really should watch this informative video.

The perpetrators of these attacks usually flood the target with massive requests. The servers get overwhelmed and stop responding to legitimate requests. A “successful” denial of service attack forces the target computer to either reset or it consumes so much of the server’s resources that it can no longer provide service to its customers. These attacks are malicious, malevolent, and unethical. Perpetrators may be prosecuted under the laws of some countries.

For more technical information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack.