PositiveID has begun selling its FDA-cleared iGlucose mobile health system for diabetes management in the United States. The iGlucose system wirelessly sends blood glucose readings from glucometers to the iGlucose diabetes management portal without requiring a cell phone or wireless plan.

Through a new partnership with National Council on Aging and Humana, Stanford University’s online Chronic Disease Self-Management program will be offered as part of Humana’s chronic care management solution. This represents the first time a national health insurer will offer the solution, which teaches self-empowerment strategies to help people manage their own health.

A new website developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School streamlines the diagnosis of autism. Users answer a seven-question test and post a home video to a website for evaluation.

A new KLAS report has found that fewer than 10 providers in the country are doing EMR integration with their smart pump vendors. Only 60%of pump providers are live on wireless technology, which is required for EMR integration.

At TEDMED, Xerox unveiled a number of new health care initiatives including a digital care coordination system for nurses that uses sensor technology to recognize when a provider enters a room, mobile devices for documentation and in-room displays to provide visible information on orders completed for each patient.  Xerox also highlighted an infection tool that analyzes patient data on symptoms, drugs, and bacteria cultures to proactively identify patients at high risk as well as a smart medication package that provides personalized instructions and tracks whether  a patient adheres to the physician’s orders.

3M has acquired CodeRyte, provider of clinical natural language processing technology and computer-assisted coding solutions for healthcare outpatient providers. The coding technology will be integrated into the 3M 360 Encompass System already used by more than 5,000 hospitals worldwide.

WhiteGlove Health has raised $12.9 million in a new investment round led by Burrill & Company. WhiteGlove is an in-network provider for Aetna and Humana in 7 states, serving more than 500,000 members. Members pay an annual fee in addition to a visit fee. Routine care services include treatment for minor acute. Individual members pay an annual membership fee of up to $420, plus $35 per visit. They also provide physician-telephone consults, as well as in-person visits with licensed nurses. The company has raised $57 million to date.

Isabel Healthcare has partnered with the Better Day EHR platform, integrating its diagnosis decision support system with the Better Day™ EHR platform and combining speech-to-text mobile devices and web-based technologies to streamline clinical documentation.

Following a series of complaints filed by provider groups and health care organizations, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a 1-year delay in its deadline for implementing the new ICD-10 diagnosis coding system. Under the delay, provider groups will have until Oct 1, 2014 to transition to ICD-10 as well as implement the new standardized health claims form (Version 5010) for electronic health transactions.

WebFirst launched a new mobile health data collection system called PhiCollect. Using the Drupal Data Management platform, forms can be created with a web-based wizard and sent to the phone or tablet to collect GPS, audio, video, barcode, images and text data.

An study presented at the 2012 American College of Cardiology conference showed that extended monitoring with the iRhythmn Zio(R) Patch, a wireless holter monitor, for up to 14 days can increase the detection and diagnosis of abnormal heart rhythmns.

Mobile health monitoring company BodyMedia, which makes an armband that captures health data from users, has raised $2.7 million of an anticipated $10 million round.

Clinical decision support company, Elsevier, has expanded its partnership with ExitCare. ExitCare’s already provides Elsevier customers with access to its patient education library. Under the new deal, Elsevier will further offer its customers a means to license the ExitCare software solution, to help them achieve meaningful use.

MD On-Line, a health care data analytics firm, has acquired MD Technologies, a health IT provider, for an undisclosed sum. In addition to a suite of revenue cycle management solutions, MD Technologies offers a practice management system that spans a broad range of provider specialties.

Authentidate, a provider of secure web-based software applications and telehealth products and services for healthcare organizations, has completed a $4.0 million secured loan financing with certain accredited investors.

According to a new report from Kalorama Information, six EHR vendors (Cerner, McKesson, Siemens, GE Healthcare, Epic, and Allscripts) account for about half of the revenue in the electronic health record market, which is valued at about $17.9 billion.

In a new partnership with IBM, researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will strengthen Watson’s capabilities as a medical resource by feeding it information from medical textbooks, journals and individual electronic health records (with patient permission).

ImpactRx, an analytics firm focused on measuring the impact of promotion on physicians’ attitudes and prescribing behavior, has acquired AlphaDetail, Inc., healthcare market research firm. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Health Care DataWorks, a provider of business intelligence and enhanced analytics and reporting tools, has selected Health Language, a provider of health care terminology software, to map data entered into its KnowledgeEdge™ brand Enterprise Data Warehouse, providing health systems with standard code sets, enhanced analytics, reporting and business intelligence.

Liaison Technologies, a provider of cloud-based integration and data management services, has partnered with Preventice to assist health care providers with patient data collection and cloud-based data transmission services. Preventice will use its wireless monitoring technology to collect patient data to the cloud. Healthcare providers as well as patients will be able to securely access patient’s biometric and EHR data.

TELUS Health Solutions, a provider of telemedicine, EHR, and remote monitoring services, has partnered with HIPAAT, a consent management and privacy auditing services provider, to implement patient-centered privacy services for health information exchanges. HIPAAT’s privacy eSuite electronically manages patients’ consent to the collection, use and disclosure of their personal health information while simultaneously adjudicating organizational and jurisdictional privacy policies.

A new study in the American Journal of Managed Care found that found that SMS reminders helped diabetes patients engage in their own self care. Researchers from Denver Health and Hospital Authority found that 79% of the participants responded to the majority of SMS prompts providing requested information such as glucose readings.

A new program for patient monitoring from iMPAK Health in collaboration with hospital system Meridian Health uses a card with buttons that have an embedded chip in them. Patients press buttons to answer pre-selected questions about how they feel, medication adherence, pain levels and other indicators. Information from the cards is first transmitted wirelessly to a cell phone or home monitoring station and subsequently to personal health records vendor NoMoreClipboard.

American Diabetes Association of Washington State has partnered with Numera Social to create a Facebook community and Mobile application designed to promote healthy nutrition and exercise to slow the progression of diabetes.

Partners HealthCare launched a new program called Step It Up in which it will provide wireless pedometers to 350 elementary school students. The chips measure the number of steps and count the minutes of activity of each student. The data on the sneaker chips is automatically uploaded to a designated computer hub in the school when students walk near it.

The National Institute of Health debuted a new Genetic Testing Registry. The online tool was developed as a public database to assist health-care professionals to better understand patients’ diseases and help patients understand their genetic information. The registry would allow users to search for genetic tests by test name, provider, or specific condition detected by the test.

A study in the Journal of Pediatrics found that electronic health records with embedded clinical flags improved the identification, diagnosis, and early counseling of overweight and obese children. The study assessed the effect of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Pediatric Weight Management Initiative and found a nearly 50% increase in height and weight measurements with exercise and nutrition counseling increasing from 1% to 50% amoung children diagnosis with unhealthy weights.

According to a new report by researchers from the Doctors Company, Oregon is the state with the highest level of physician EHR adoption with 41% of physicians using EHRs. Following Oregon are Georgia, Florida, Washington and Virginia.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks, LLC acquired wireless telemonitoring hardware and software company Boston Life Labs. NantWorks is building an integrated evidence-based, genomically-informed, personalized approach to the delivery of care and the development of next generation diagnostics and therapeutics.

Epocrates will divest its EHR initiative to re-focus on its core pharma-supported, mobile clinical apps. Epocrates’ mobile apps currently have 340,000 physician users, according to the company but its EMR never really got off the ground after a delayed launch.

A study presented at the recent International Society for Optical Engineering conference found that the iPad and similar touch-screen tablets are just as good as standard LCD monitors for viewing medical images. However, both tablets and consumer-grade LCD screens are not as sensitive as high-resolution radiology monitors and should not be used for primary clinical diagnosis.

Ochsner Medical Center in Louisiana announced its 1000th telestroke consult. The program, called the Acute Stroke System for Emergent Regional Telestroke (ASSERT), was launched in 2009 and uses video conference to connect vascular neurologists with patients in rural and understaffed hospitals to guide use of high-risk, but potentially life-saving thrombolytic therapy.

Cleveland Clinic is adding X-rays, laboratory tissue samples, photographs and any other image related to a patient’s care to its electronic medical records. Other healthcare organizations and vendors that have recently been working on the problem of storing and accessing digital image files on EMRs include Siemens Healthcare and Dell as well as Peake Healthcare Innovations (a collaborative venture between Johns Hopkins University and Harris Corp.), VMware, and Intel.

In a recent hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade, experts called for Interoperable State prescription drug tracking systems aimed at reducing prescription drug misuse. As an alternative to a nationwide system, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) called for Congress to create a state-based grant program to help individual states create ePrescription monitoring system, and provide software upgrades so statewide systems could communicate with each other.

Shareable Ink has partnered with Pentaho to incorporate its Business Analytics tool into the Shareable Ink Analytics Platform which extracts clinical and operational data that originates from natural input tools such as iPads and digital pens, and visualizes it into dashboards and drill-down analyses and reports.

iPatientCare debuted its R12 application suite. New features designed to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements include support of ICD-10, implementation of leading IHE profiles for connecting to various disease specific (e.g. cancer) registries, supporting the Direct protocol for secure clinical messaging, and generating clinical quality measures as identified by PQRI, PCMH, and NCQA.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has founded a new company called QI Healthcare to commercialize technology developed at hospital. Funded by a $400,000 investment from Cincinnati Children’s and nonprofit, state-supported economic development group CincyTech, QI Healthcare’s first product is a Surgical Outcomes Collection System that aggregates data from various hospital systems, including electronic medical records, to identify opportunities to improve patient care.

A new study in Health Affairs concludes that public reporting of hospital quality through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare website has had little or no effect on mortality rates.

Asthmapolis is partnering with Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) to equip its Sacramento-based asthma patients with its GPS-enabled inhalers. The Asthmapolis device sits on top of inhalers, and sends real-time breathing data to physicians’ smartphone also using the Qualcomm 2net platform. Asthmapolis previously announced partnerships with the CDC Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch and the California HealthCare Foundation.

UK researchers are testing a new iPad app that helps stroke patients engage in informed decision making regarding whether to receive or refuse thrombolysis. Though clot busting therapy can be life-saving it also has the risk of life-threatening intra-cranial bleed. The new app, which is in pilot testing at hospitals in England, gives patients and their families a “visual representation” of the types of treatments the patient may need, plus bar charts, flowcharts and other graphic images that show the effects of using (or not using) thrombolysis.

HealthSpot announced a deal with Sprint to add wireless connectivity to its primary and specialty care kiosks which are fully-enclosed videoconferencing booths designed for pharmacies, supermarkets, and workplaces. HealthSpot also announced a deal with 3M Littmann to include the company’s Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 in HealthSpot’s kiosks, allowing clinicians to listen in real-time to body sounds during remote examinations of patients using the medical kiosks.

At HIMSS we saw lots of new products from EMR vendors and others. NextGen, unveiled a new suite of products designed to support the implementation of Accountable Care Organizations, Patient-Centered Medical Home and Health Information Exchanges. New offerings include a patient population management program, a performance management suite providing performance analytics on regulatory, clinical and financial indicators, as well as NextPen, a digital pen device that captures structured patient data directly from an English or foreign language form and transfers the information to the NextGen Ambulatory EHR.

Quest Diagnostics will offer a 30-day electronic health record (EHR) implementation guarantee for hospitals looking to quickly enable bi-directional data exchange with their ambulatory physicians through its Care360® EHR web-based solution.

eClinicalWorks, debuted a new Care Coordination Portal for Accountable Care Organizations and Patient-centered Medical Homes. The portal includes care plan documentation for care management, patient engagement via text, voice and e-mail, home-monitoring device interfaces, transition of care plan management, and integration with eClinicalWorks Community Analytics.

REACH Health will integrate technology from the personal tele-presence company, Vidyo, into its proprietary software platform that offers multidiscipline acute care telemedicine capabilities such as workflow, enhanced diagnostic assistance and automated documentation capabilities.

A new survey evaluating a school based tele-psychiatric program showed that an overwhelming majority viewed the project as beneficial. Under the program, mental health professionals at the University of Texas Medical Branch counseled over 3,000 students at nine middle schools and high schools as well as the Galveston County Juvenile Justice facility through videoconferencing.

PatientSafe Solutions introduced a new wireless clinical mobility solution that enables nurses to access patient data, manage care activies, and communicate with the entire care team via a mobile app. The new PatientTouch system relies on a custom jacket outfitted with a barcode scanner and extended-life battery that fits over an iPod touch.

Imprivata, provider of secure access and collaboration solutions for healthcare, debuted Imprivata CorText(TM), a HIPAA-compliant texting application designed by physicians, for physicians in acute care settings. CorText is designed to help physicians share images and study results with colleagues for second opinions, to facilitate physician-nurse communication, and streamline prescription clarification.

Teladoc unveiled a new telehealth solution, TeladocConnect, which allows physicians to connect with their patients 24/7 via telephone or secure online video. If a patient’s regular physician is unavailable, the consultation request is directed to Teladoc’s network of U.S.-based, board-certified physicians, which acts as an extension of the physician’s practice.

Stanford researchers have developed a new game called Septris, modeled after Tetris, to train physicians how to properly treat patients with serious systemic infections. Players must diagnose and treat the patient’s infection before their vital signs begin deteriorating.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Motorola Mobility Inc. and BoxTone are collaborating on the development a series of HIPAA-compliant, secure mobile solutions. Under the partnership, BoxTone’s automated Enterprise Mobility Management software platform will be available on Motorola devices such as the DROID RAZR MAXX smartphone and DROID XYBOARD tablet via the Verizon Wireless 4G network.

Dell plans to integrate its cloud-hosting and Unified Clinical Archiving system with Siemen’s Image Sharing & Archiving solution. The two companies will collaboratively market the joint solution in the United Kingdom beginning Q1 2012 with plans to expand to France and Germany later in the year. The Dell Cloud Clinical Archive currently manages nearly 4.8 billion diagnostic imaging objects and supports more than 800 clinical sites, making Dell one of the largest healthcare cloud computing service providers in the industry.

Covisint has selected the Smart Problem List from Humana-subsidiary Anvita Health for its health information exchange data aggregation and care platform. Its sophisticated analytics solutions power population and quality programs for top health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, laboratory companies, and electronic medical records companies.

Electronic data security and compliance vendor, Somansa Technologies, released a new product to help health care providers maintain HIPAA-compliants in their communications and electronic transmission of personal health information. Mail-i for Healthcare IT ensures messages containing patient information and confidential data are secured by monitoring email, webmail, instant messages, FTP, Telnet, social networking, P2P, and other Port 80 traffic. Administrators receive instant alerts to violations of database and messaging security policies.

Oracle added several new features to its Enterprise Healthcare Analytics form including access via iPad and iPhone, increased integration of comparative effectiveness research and formulary modeling, and operational support for scheduling of patients and other key resources such as operating rooms.

Nuance Communications debuted two new Clinical Language Understanding solutions intended to help health care enterprises in the transition to ICD-10 and in achieving Meaningful Use. The new technologies allow provides to simultaneously document and interpret voice-dictated information for the purposes of billing and data analytics.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will require all 5,500 federally certified dialysis centers in the U.S. to submit facility-wide and patient-level data electronically through its CROWNweb system. Mandated data elements include patient admission and discharge history, medical evidence report, death notification forms, patient attributes and related treatment, and clinical values for hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and vascular access.

HIMSS acquired the mHealth Summit, a three year old conference owned by the Foundation from the National Institutes for Health in Washington D.C each December.

The GSM Association is predicting that the worldwide market for mobile health revenue will top $2.3 billion by 2017. Healthcare providers are projected to account for only 10% of the total amount with two-thirds to be driven by mobile monitoring services.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a mobile app called Mobilyze that uses nearly 40 phone sensor values, such as GPS, ambient light and social contacts, to predict the user’s mood. Based on its predictive model, the app prompts patients to take actions designed to stave off depressive episodes. An initial 8 person evaluation published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research showed significant benefit from use of the app.

The Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT launched another app competition challenging software development teams to create an app that makes it easy for disabled people to access the data in electronic health records.

Mobile telemetry provider CardioNet which provides outpatient cardiac monitoring servies announced the acquisition of ECG Scanning & Medical Services, another cardiac monitoring provider, for $5.8 million.

DSS, Inc., a VistA software developer, debuted a new Mental Health Kiosk solution designed to collect clinical information including psychological evaluations directly from patients during check-in. The Kiosk integrates with the existing DSS Mental Health Suite, an EHR module already available at all Veterans Affairs’ Medical Centers.

HIPAA-compliant messaging platform company TigerText has raised $8.2M in a Series A round with participants including Easton Capital and New Science Ventures. The company offers a SaaS-based Web-to-mobile, device-to-device communications similar to that offered by Doximity.

Doximity, a mobile phone-based physician social network and communications platform founded by Epocrates co-founder Jeff Tangney, unveiled its new iRounds platform this week, which allows doctors and medical students to chat in a HIPAA-secure forum in real time about patient cases and new research.

A new study by Deloitte Access Economics finds that using hospital-in-the-home programs in lieu of inpatient care could cut governmental healthcare costs by a third. The study looked closely at programs in Australia already providing acute, sub-acute, and post-acute care in the home. Hospital-in-home care was cheaper for all AR-DRGs examined (cellulitis, venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolus, respiratory infection, inflammation, COPD, and knee replacement) with an estimated cost savings of $108.6M for those conditions alone.

AGNITY Healthcare debuted a new platform bringing disparate health care communications streams. The APTUS platform unifies communications (paging, voice, video, presence, location, alerts and other notifications) with real-time mobile access to clinical information (EMR, CPOE, PACs, etc.) on widely used smart phones and tablet devices.

HealthyCircles has partnered with ICLOPS and will offer the ICLOPS Registry and Analytics portfolio solution as part of its care coordination and management platform. The partnership will layer enhanced analytics capabilities on top of the current HealthyCircles data sharing tools facilitating quality reporting and quality improvement activities.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that is has collected genetic information from about 23,000 veterans at 40 health care facilities with an additional 30,000 veterans having agreed to participate in the program. Launched in May 2011, the Million Veteran Program seeks to enroll one million veterans and study their genetic material in tandem with clinical information stored in their electronic health records.

UnitedHealth Group announced that its Optum health-services unit will launch a new cloud-computing platform to facilitate the exchange of electronic health data across multiple devices and locations. The platform will allow health providers and insurers to share data, as well as access health applications from outside developers. Optum is also developing an app market for apps aimed at hospitals, physicians and health plans. Optum plans to charge for data storage, as well as collect fees for putting developers’ apps in the cloud. A beta launch is planned for June 2012.

Lumeris, provider of cloud-based services and software for accountable care delivery, is joining Highmark, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Independence Blue Cross in buying NaviNet, a healthcare communications network used by physicians, payers and hospitals. The deal would combine Lumeris’ care coordination and integration platform with NaviNet’s network for secure provider communications.

Royal Philips Electronics announced a partnership with eHealth Global Technologies (eHGT), provider of IT solutions for medical record retrieval. eHGT’s services are specifically designed to reduce the time cancer patients spend waiting for their first oncology appointment by gathering diagnostic imaging and other data and presenting it on demand at the oncologist’s point-of-care.

AirStrip Technologies announced a strategic investment from Qualcomm’s recently announced $100M Life Fund. Qualcomm launched its 2net platform at the mHealth Summit last year, where AirStrip was named as one of its partners.

The West Wireless Health Institute, a healthcare technology not-for-profit, announced a newly created wireless framework for hospitals and health systems. The wireless installation standard is intended to ensure reliable and secure transmission of medical data over wireless networks. The reference architecture has already been deployed at six hospitals and health systems.

Apixio, provider of clinical data integration, search and analytics in healthcare, has joined Open Health Tools (OHT). OHT is an open source community that builds standards-based interoperability tools for applications used by patients and their care providers to access vital and reliable medical information.

Acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner signaled that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid may re-examine and consider an extension of the ICD-10 implementation timeline. Details on the extension are forthcoming.

WellPoint will use Health Language’s LEAP I-10 tool to facilitate its transition to full ICD-10 compliance.

MediSwipe, provider of merchant payment services and financial products for the healthcare industry, signed a letter of intent to acquire the assets of ReachMeDaily.com, a social media network used by residents in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Facilities pay a monthly fee for residents to use the closed-loop, HIPAA-compliant social media network to connect with family members.

According to a new report by research2guidance, a German firm that specializes in research into mobile markets, the global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion. The mobile health apps market grew seven-fold to $718 million in 2011.

An upcoming Institute of Medicine panel will examine how telehealth technologies can improve care outcomes and control costs in the American health care system. The panel will examine how technological developments including mHealth, electronic intensive care units, remote-monitoring, social networking and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, can be best used to extend care to those in rural and underserved regions.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-Utah) plans to introduce legislation that would create a national provider database, enabling interstate license portability for physicians, making it easier for them to practice telemedicine in multiple states. Currently physicians must apply for a separate license in each state where they practice telemedicine.

Telehealth provider Consult A Doctor announced that it will debut two new products at the HIMSS 2012 conference to allow hospitals and clinics to customize access plans for cloud-based virtual visits. When doctors communicate with patients using MyHospital 24/7 and MyClinic 24/7, they can add recorded calls or videos to an electronic health record (EHR) for a patient. Consult A Doctor also plans to launch a mobile telehealth platform in the first quarter of 2012.

Canadian telecommunications provider Telus announced that its healthcare division has acquired Wolf Medical Systems, a Canadian IT vendor that specializes in cloud-based electronic health-record systems for physician practices.

ADP, a provider of business outsourcing applications, has acquired PhyLogic Healthcare for an undisclosed sum. PhyLogic is a privately held company that provides financial management services, cloud-based practice management tools and EHR systems.

DocBookMD announced that it raised $2.2 million in seed round funding from private investors involved in the healthcare industry. The new funding will allow the company to accelerate adoption of its rapidly growing mHealth application, DocBookMD. Currently used by physicians in more than 20 states, DocBookMD allows doctors to rapidly exchange text, photos, charts, X-rays and other information to speed patient care and save valuable time.

Digital file cabinet and e-payment solution doxo announced that more than 40 hospitals and 3,000 physicians have joined its service. Patients use doxo to connect with their healthcare providers to securely receive, review and manage their medical and insurance documents and pay their medical bills.

PerfectServe, a provider of clinical communication services, announced that it has raised $10.9 million in a Series C round led by PJC Capital LLC. Additional participants include National Healthcare Services, the strategic investment arm of the MemorialCare Health System and CHV Capital of the Indiana University Health System.

Health Care DataWorks has been named the Outstanding Start-up Business at the 2011 TechColumbus Innovation Awards. The Central Ohio company launched three years ago to provide business intelligence solutions that enable healthcare organizations to improve their quality of care and reduce costs.

Health Evolution Partners (HEP), the healthcare investment firm started by former US National Health Information Technology Coordinator Dr. David Brailer, has announced a strategic partnership with Verizon Connected Healthcare Solutions, to identify and work with promising mobile health, telemedicine, and health data management companies. To date, HEP has indirectly invested in a number of mobile health and connected health companies that provide real-time location services for healthcare facilities, mobile-enabled medication management workflow platforms, smartphone-based e-prescribing services and tablet-enabled remote patient visits.

OmniCompete has been acquired by InnoCentive, creator of global open innovation competitions. Best known for its annual Global Security Challenge, OmniCompete has executed nearly two-dozen high profile challenges throughout its history in the areas of security, energy, healthcare and cloud computing.

GE Healthcare also announced an updated version of its patient portal, Centricity Patient Online 13. Patient Online 13 allows patients to connect with their healthcare providers through the Web or mobile device to schedule appointments, pay bills, manage health information, complete pre-visit forms, send secure messages, begin an eVisit and respond to alerts and reminders sent by the practice. It helps customers meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 patient and family engagement criteria and prepare them for expected Stage 2 requirements.

Health 2.0 kicked off its first Health 2.0 Developers World Cup in Delhi with a one-day code-a-thon held in conjunction with Health 2.0 India Conference. The next international code-a-thon will be in Fukushima, Japan on February 21st with other competitions planned in China, the Netherlands, Russia and several cities across the US. The winners from each competition will face-off in San Francisco at the 6th Annual Fall Health 2.0 Conference for the Developers World Cup title.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched its first iPad app allowing users to access to the organization’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites. Users can also view articles about health topics, a health-related blog, updated CDC announcements and news releases and the CDC’s podcast library.

Three federally designated Beacon communities in New Orleans, Michigan and Cincinnati have launched text messaging campaigns to provide wellness resources for individuals at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Residents can participate in the “txt4health” program by texting “HEALTH” to 300400 and then answering questions that evaluate their risk of developing the disease.

A new randomized control trial published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found that the use of a virtual coach was significantly associated with maintaining activity level. The study looked at participants who were asked to use a pedometer to measure their step counts and meet with a virtual coach. There was no difference in change in BMI and participants’ satisfaction.

An international research team that created a Real-time Care Experience Feedback System Using QR Codes has won the Health 2.0 Relevant Evidence to Advance Care and Health (REACH) Developer Challenge sponsored by AcademyHealth. Runners up included the Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative’s Well Visit Planner Mobile App, mobile data application to help parents plan and navigate their child’s well visits, and Aggregated Self-Experiments, a platform that helps patients develop user-generated self-experiments and online information.

Isabel Healthcare and BMJ Group introduced a new point-of-care diagnosis and treatment decision aid, Isabel with Best Practice. Isabel with Best Practice takes advantage of clinical content from the BMJ group and fully integrates with electronic health records.

The Facebook IPO may be dominating the broader market news this week but notably Greenway Medical Tech (GWAY) became the first pure EHR vendor to IPO since the passage of HITECH this Thursday. GWAY provides cloud-based electronic health records and practice management solutions for outpatient clinics, currently serving 20 million patients in the U.S.

Allscripts announced that it will integrate M*Modal’s speech and language understanding technology into Allscripts’ acute and ambulatory electronic health records. Allscripts currently offers Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition technology for use with its EHR.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has created a new online toolkit to help rural providers roll out health IT systems. The online resource includes a funding guide, a series of case studies on IT implementation, as well as workflow designs, strategic plans, project checklists and readiness assessments to help providers get started.

InTouch Technologies, a provider of acute healthcare remote presence solutions, announced a $6 million investment by iRobot. InTouch Health and iRobot have a joint development and licensing agreement to co-develop robotic technologies for healthcare.

The Premier Healthcare Alliance announced a partnership with risk management company Verisk Health to combine Premier’s clinical, financial and operational comparative database containing information on 20% of all U.S. hospital discharges with Verisk Health’s risk-based analytics, which is currently used by more than 450 healthcare organizations. This Premier–Verisk Health initiative is designed to enable the implementation of ACOs and other integrated delivery systems.

OptumInsight announced that its health information exchange and computer-assisted coding solutions have achieved the highest industry standards for enabling health system interoperability at the annual Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North American Connectathon. Success in these tests is an important indicator that participating applications can support physicians, hospitals and other groups in state, regional and national health networks as they connect, share information and collaborate to enhance patient care and care outcomes.

The Health 2.0 New York codeathon wrapped up last week with Team PubMeddit taking home first prize for an application that layers socially-driven search over biomedical literature and research databases, e.g. PubMed.gov/MEDLINE and ClinicalTrials.gov.

A new report from Dow Jones VentureSource finds that venture capital investors poured $633M into medical software and information services in 2011, the highest level since 2001, when $759M was raised.

In trying to learn where cancer care might be improved, the #CISummit audience listened closely to the immense wisdom of Amy Berman, who courageously shared learnings from her own personal journey with cancer.

For Amy, what has been difficult yet most meaningful in her own struggle, has not been navigating clinical trials data but has been working with physicians to define and articulate her own goals.

In laying out a roadmap on how to put patients at the center of care, she made the following recommendation: “I would say that I’m very hopeful that people want to do the right thing, but right now the infrastructure is not supportive of the right thing. For example if we go back to the EMR, there is no standard way to capture what that patient’s goal is. There is a growing movement for Physican Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) but its not incorporated into EMR. You need to know not just the diagnosis but the course of disease, choices around treatment, and the impact of that choice is on you and your quality of life. Its a partnership between the doctor and patient but ultimately is the patient’s health at stake and the patient has an important role to play here.”

As she boldy concluded: “There are no wrong choices only informed choices”.

Frank Ingari, President and Chief Executive Officer, Essence Healthcare, described how a collaborative payer models and integrated provider associations have achieved decreased hospital bed use and readmission rates. Data (and pay for performance) have reduced information asymmetry, adverse selection and denial of care rates. By providing technology and data to providers, Essence is allowing physicians to engage in continuous learning and identify actionable information based on their performance.

Dr. Chris Chen, founder of ChenMed, showcased how his organization turned its head to the sub-optimal care resulting from fee-for-service and instead pursued a model of full global risk. By focusing on improved physician culture (small panel size, frequently panel review, open discussion of practice patterns and outcomes among all physicians) and facilitating rapid cycles for technology innovation (such as the creation of a pharmacy robot delivering prepared prescriptions directly to the exam room door) ChenMed has achieved admirable outcomes and satisfaction scores among its enrollees.

Dr. Brian Prestwich, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Southern California, highlighted the four pillars of primary care – relationship over time, access, comprehensive care and coordinated care. He provided examples how his clinic has drawn on models piloted by GroupHealth to improve care. A new worksheet for well child checks has increased his clinic’s structured developmental screening rate from 10 to 90%. Use of occupational therapists has allowed him to embed wellness coaching into his clinic. His call to action? “As a doctor in the trenches please get out there to agitate for better health information technology, and develop integrated health systems that will help us get the job done.”

David Krichhoff, CEO of Weight Watchers, described the R&D Weight Watchers has invested into developing and validating consumer-facing wellness technologies. He called on the integration and use of wellness services in achieving behavioral change among patients. As an example, the NHS in the United Kingdom purchases vouchers for Weight Watchers, which it then provides to doctors so doctors can prescribe and refer patients to Weight Watchers.

Already the CMS Innovation Center has been testing and piloting new models of care delivery involving both technology and business model innovation in sites across the country. Examples? Primary care demonstration sites at federally qualified health centers in 44 states, a new focus on dual eligibles, bundled payments for care, pioneer ACOs, the Innovation Advisors Program, the Million Hearts Initiative, partnership for Patients, among more…

These sites are simultaneously laboratories for the development of best-practices as well as demonstration projects to show our country what is possible when providers and payers begin thinking about care provision differently.

Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, followed Rick Gilfillan and underscored the importance of data access in achieving CMS’s three-fold goals of better health, better care, and lower costs. He provided four examples of how HHS is helping stakeholders to access, analyze and use data to drive innovation while respecting and rigorously protecting beneficiary information:

1. Blue Button Initiative: Over 500,000 vets, military personnel and Medicare beneficiaries have used this technology to download electronic copies of their own health information. The private sector is now following suit with insurers and HCOs offering their own blue button analogs.
2. Pioneer ACOs: CMS is providing ACOs with claims data on participating patients so that they can benchmark their performance and pinpoint gaps in care.
3. Physicians: Claims data for qualified public / private sector companies will help them assess physician practice patterns and assess provider performance.
4. HHS health indicators warehouse: Community-level health data will help communities assess the health status of their constituents and identify areas for intervention.

He concluded: “There is no problem that Americans can’t invent themselves out of…Transformation driven by a tide of grassroots innovation mojo has already begun.”