Doximity, which offers a social network for providers, partnered with Stanford Medical School to create an alumni application. The app allows physicians to search a directory of published articles, lectures, clinical trials and CVs from their peers.

This week is national nurse week. To celebrate, Voalté, creator of health care communication software, is hosting a storytelling competition on Facebook so nurses can share why they chose to go into their profession.

Shareable Ink and Medical Web Technologies integrated Shareable Ink’s electronic medical record and the One Medical Passport System. Web Technologies’ passport lets patients scheduled for surgery enter their demographic, insurance and medical information online. It’s then made available to their medical facilities on an EMR.

Houston-based Memorial Hermann hospital @houstonhospital will live-tweet a brain surgery today from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. CST. This comes after the hospital’s twitter coverage of an open-heart surgery in February.

Clinverse, Inc., a cloud-based financial management software for clinical trials, closed a $3.8 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Hatteras Venture Partners.

Verizon partnered with TeleCommunication Systems Inc. to create a 911 texting service. Using SMS can help those who are deaf or hard of hearing to report an emergency.

Health 2.0′s Codeathon in Boston this week will focus on creating Big Data applications. Register here.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a delay for data collection under the Sunshine Act. The act requires the reporting of payments or gifts to physicians. CMS said the delay will give organizations time to prepare their submissions.

The Institute for Health Technology Transformation released “A Roadmap for Provider-Based Automation in a New Era of Healthcare.” The report gives advice on how to set up health IT applications for population health management.

UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, brought in more than $100 billion in 2011. In recent years it’s expanded to more areas of health care by setting up 24-hour nurse hotlines and electronic medical records, and it even owns a bank that handles health savings accounts.

Both the mHealth Regulatory Coalition and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society have submitted proposals to the FDA in an attempt to tweak guidelines of mobile medical apps. The proposals encourage innovation and emphasized education.

IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology have launched the One Million Healthy Children project, which will use data analysis to measure social contributing factors among children in Georgia with diabetes, autism, and asthma.

Maine based foundation Patient Advocates has partnered with American Well, online health care provider, to offer a telemedicine program by which patients can utilize Boston’s health care expert circuit.

Massive Health, a company creating tools to empower individuals to take control over their health, has developed a photo app by which users snap a shot of the food their consuming to document their eating habits in the hopes that they will analyze and change their eating behavior. You simply snap a shot and rate the food on a scale from “fit” to “fat” and share pix with friends. Massive is also collecting a valuable user-generated dataset that surpassed 200,000 unique geo-located ratings of “healthy” and “unhealthy” meals in just two days.

Mobile health care innovator, Diversinet has received a patent for an anti-cloning encryption method for the protection of health care data. The company now has increased their intellectual property, with 16 patents with 32 pending applications.

Swiss University, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), has developed a small wireless device that attaches a smartphone to four small body sensors and hooks through the patient’s belt loop to monitor their cardiac rhythms. Any abnormalities that are detected are transmitted to physicians. Researchers have reported that the device is capable of one month of continuous use on a single battery charge.

The McKesson Foundation awarded $1.4M to researchers at Scripps who are seeking to unveil the effectiveness of mobile apps on low-income diabetes patients who use tools for managing their health.

More in sleep. Following Zeo’s lead, there’s now a partnership between T-Mobile, Nokia, Meridian Health, and iMPak Health launching a sleep monitoring system called SleepTrak, which uses near field communication to track and monitor sleeping patterns and symptoms for users attempting to improve their sleep.

The Ear Science Institute of Australia has launched a new software product that enables patients to manage and maintain their cochlear implants remotely using a computer and a wireless connection. Previously patients were required to visit the institute for such a checkup.

In a recent study, researchers from Harvard University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and CVS Caremark critically compared 15 different diabetes-related websites (among a pool of 300), in which they encountered various incongruous components such as content criteria and membership. The results strike a chord as the ultimate goal of the ongoing larger study is to unveil a truer understanding of patient behavior given the changing climate of social media and self-management tools.

Physicians Interactive Holdings and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights announced the launch of Health eVillages, a program designed to bring mobile health tools to health professionals in underserved communities around the world.

United Health Group partners with the mobile communications solutions provider CareSpeak to phase in a new service that will allow for patients and caregivers to participate in two-way mobile text message communication. The goal is to improve adherence to treatment plans.  Patients will be sent reminders and encouragement to comply with care regiments, and caregivers will be notified via text about their patients’ biometric data.

A $25M program, initiated by Blue Cross blue Shield (of NC) and Allscripts, has been implemented in North Carolina by which 750 physicians and 39 free clinics will be subsidized for implementation of EMRs.

Procura releases Procura Mobile, a blackberry solution for enabling home health care.

A recent study published in Science Translational Medicine used machine learning and data mining techniques to unveil biomarkers and eventually conduct accurate risk assessments for cardiac arrest patients.

The public has decided among two finalists for the Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge (sponsored by Sanofi-Avents): Chewable is a food choice assistant in the form of a mobile game for diabetes patients and Ginger.io is a self-monitoring iPhone app that tracks movement and social patterns of patients without their data input. Both winners receive $100,000 and a one-month stay at Rock Health Incubator to keep up the progress on their solutions.

The ONC and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have designed and launched a project called “Care About Your Care” in an effort to create a space for patients and consumers to better comprehend their care quality and the ways in which they might take participatory action.

A partnership between American Well and Numera will leverage a new telehealth solution that directly feeds health monitoring information into a live online interaction between patients and their physicians. American Well will contribute their online care suite technologies, while Numera will pitch in with their NET gateway; patients can input using their home monitoring devices. Such a solution will serve most beneficial for chronic condition patients as well as those who have more difficulty with mobility.

Out with the paper, in with the iPads. Yale School of Medicine is equipping students with iPads in an effort to save money and “go green”.

Medical documentation platform vendor MD-IT has launched its’ android app, iConnect, which offers smart phone dictation and EMR access. The free product is offered through Google’s Android Market.

More incentives for rural health care access springs up; HHS has announced their $11.9 million grant that will be dispersed to rural health networks to be used towards the implementation of HIT’s and HER’s. 40 organizations will receive $300,000 to spend on equipment, and related integration costs.

It’s not just the (wo)manpower here at Health 2.0 who possess MBA’s in addition to their MD… A relevant article was published in the New York Times exposing this more common trend as Doc’s are encouraged to think more like entrepreneurs what with the tightening government regulations and insurance pressures.

Verizon Universal Identify Services-Healthcare that’s been around since November 2010 has now expanded to meet identity requirements for accessing EHR’s and HIE’s, and offers FDA approved digital signature for clinical documentation, e-pharma options for prescription distribution, and of course access through smartphones.

The White House “Startup America” program has expanded its support of Health IT developers by featuring a group of “Innovation Exchanges for Health IT”. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. and the ONC are helping promote a series of meetings for Health organizations and Health IT developers who are nearing the proof-of-concepts stage in their development.

A $500 million settlement between the Federal Government and Google has concluded the charges against Google for illegally allowing web advertisements of fraudulent Canadian pharmacies to be posted in the U.S.

HHS awarded $137 million in grants to invest in almost every state’s effort to utilize preventative health IT care tools and programs.

Thanks to regulations that the Obama Administration has announced,  hospitals might find it easier to increase the use of telehealth. Hospitals should be able to save an estimated $13.6 million, and be able to undergo video consultations with patients therefore offering more access and care in rural areas. Of course, there are mixed viewpoints on the issue.

Urology EHR vendor, Meridian EMR, filed a law suit against a rival EHR vendor, Intuitive Medical Software, for allegedly accessing encrypted proprietary patient data from MeridianEMR’s system.

Awarepoint Corporation, a real time location systems supplier for hospitals, received $27 million of series F financing led by new investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as well as Top Tier Capital Partners, Cardinal Partners, Venrock, and Jafco Ventures. Awarepoint plans to use the funding towards the expansion of its’ “aware360platform”- a solution for mobilizing the healthcare environment.

Registry vendor PhyTel showed us a sneak peek at its’ new interface that combines data visualization of a practice’s population with the ability to immediately contact the individuals concerned by e-mail, text, phone, and more.

As EHRs open doors of opportunity for tracking and mapping disease trends and data, Scientific American looks at natural language processing as a way to extract data out of text. Clinithink is one new vendor we’ve seen that appears to be cracking the code.

Northeastern University has developed a new smartphone add on device that may eliminate the need for finger pricking among diabetics; nanosensors are injected beneath the skins’ surface that picks up on glucose levels when using the light sensor smartphone attachment.

Kaiser Permanente has launched their first mobile phone application that allows members to utilize their location directory to find nearby facilities. Upcoming projects will include a mobile version of their online My Health Manager solution.

The Center for Tech and Aging has raised $447K in mHealth grants to support the advancements of technologies for elderly with chronic conditions.

Numbered are the days of pagers; a new app allows doctors and paramedics to use iPhones as a replacement of the traditional pager. The paging system was designed for Apple, Inc. by communications company, OnSet Technology.

Medical reference, software developer Epocrates has finally launched their new EHR which was initially announced 18 months ago. It is currently web based, and not yet mobile.

Azumio, the developer of the Instant Heart Rate app has raised $2.5 million in venture funding, which will enable the development of new apps including Stress Check and Stress Doctor. Funding donors include Founders Fund, Accel Partners, and Felicis Ventures.

We recently mentioned that Microsoft was planning to absorb help Google Health users move their data to Healthvault prior to its’ closure. Microsoft’s tool that allows users to transfer PHRs has now been launched.

We caught a demo of Explorys out of the Cleveland Clinic which has arrangements with several large health systems. It takes, matches and integrates anonymous clinical data for research. It remains one of the most comprehensive clinical data sets (10 M lives) and has a nice business intelligence interface.

Two artist-inventors are raising funds to encourage the launch of their product- a pulse sensor-for compatibility with Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform for interactive electronics.

Sanford Guide for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases has (finally) gone mobile-now physicians can use the widely used reference guide via their smartphones and/or tablet.

A new radiology data-mining tool, REALM (RadLex Enhanced Auotomated Leximer Mining) was presented to The Society for Imaging Informatics last week and is being tested by our friends at Massachusetts General Hospital. The hope is to improve decision-support systems.

The web-based physician network, Sermo, teamed with Johnson & Johnson to develop their newly launched physician consultation mobile app, which is essentially an app version of their web network but it also includes iConsult an immediate crowdsourcing tool allowing other docs to comment on immediate clinical cases.

For $202 M, the health care benefit provider Aetna, will buy PayFlex Holdings, Inc. in order to improve the technical functionality of their products.

Brazilian researchers have developed a software tool capable of using twitter to track Dengue Fever outbreaks. This is similar to the Google Correlates project work we mentioned a few months ago.

The NY Times published an article revealing the attempts by telepsychiatry (which has been around for decades but is recently gaining widely usable recognition) to tap into the receipt of funding and acceptance by providers such as Medicare and Medicaid. The article covers examples of some companies and start-ups encouraging this change.

Dossia has expanded their personal EHR platform to one that encourages usability through action by patients, incorporating social networking and gaming.

One mans’ personal story exemplifies how a shortage of critical care specialists influences hospitals to turn to remote doctor’s for patient monitoring through use of eICU technology. Over three dozen hospitals in the U.S. are said to be providing care for critically ill patients, among the largest is The Banner Estrella Medical Center in Pheonix which implemented in 2006 what they call iCare, where this patient experiences care from a Doctor in Tel Aviv.

At $512, Open PCR kits-copy machines for DNA- are now being shipped worldwide as in-home genomes that require only a set of screwdrivers to assemble.

IBM study reportedly surveyed over 1,300 wellness device users to better predict what the future holds for such tools. It is predicted that those to make the cut will be related to diet, elder care, true blood, mobility, and brain wave sensors.

Google Health users will soon be able to transfer their information to Microsoft Health Vault’s personal health record platform. Google Health is expected to close come January of 2012, with data available for download until January of 2013.

Fast Company features CARE (Collaborative Assessment and Recommendation Engine), a proactive medical care software engine that emphasizes disease prediction and preventive treatment well before diseases manifest.

We caught an early look at Medfy. It’s still in private beta, but has aggregated a huge volume of clinical abstracts which it machine reads, and presents to a user/patient in a new graphical manner. It’s at core a reinvention of the medical search process.

Scripps Health and the West Wireless Health Institute (both of San Diego) released a study addressing the success of the GE VScan portable ultrasound device that is able to track ejection fractions from the heart as well as an EKG.

Standards are rising for HIPAA compliance when implementing electronic administrative and financial transactions, as the first two of many “operating rules” have been adopted by Medicare and Medicaid.

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Know a creative college student? Check out our newly launched “Go Viral to Improve Health: Collegiate Challenge.” The prizes are big and we are now accepting teams.

This week, NPR’s Talk of the Nation aired Patients Seek Moral And Medical Advice and Support Online which featured Pat Furlong, founder of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, and Susannah Fox, associate director of digital strategy for the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

MEDecision appointed Deborah Gage their new CEO. She previously served as president and CEO of GTESS, RosettaMed and SolutionPoint.

Axial Exchange, a provider of clinical data sharing tools, raised $1.15 million from a $1.5 million share offering. Axial CEO Joanne Rhode, is the former CEO and director of HIT strategy at Red Hat.

Last month, the Institute for the Future released their report on Breakthroughs to Cures. The report outlined the results of a participatory forecasting game designed to help medical professionals, policy-makers and patients develop new approaches to medical research. The game crowd sourced solutions for research models that would increase the speed of innovation around a fictitious outbreak of a neurodegenerative disease. Check out Fast Company‘s review for more details.

GravityEight Inc., a San Francisco start-up launched a centralized web-based dashboard that tracks users’ wellness along 8 different axes. The platform offers educational resources and is interoperable with mainstream personal fitness devices such as the Nike+ run tracker, the Withings scale and the Zero sleep monitor. Check out Xconomy for more details.

ADP, provider of human resource, payroll and benefits administration services,  announced its acquisition of AdvancedMD, a privately-held, provider of cloud-based practice management and EMR technologies. See the full press release here.

Intuit Health released a survey documenting patient anxiety around cost and a desire for increased connectivity with their clinicians. The second annual Health Care Check-Up Survey showed that most expect that same level of connectivity and convenience from their doctor’s office as they would an online banking or social networking platform.

The New York Times article, Do-It-Yourself Health Care with Smartphones, featured an interesting research2guidance mobile health report looking at global un-platformed health trends.

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