News & Updates

HHS announced their 2013 agenda to lower costs and improve quality of care with the use of health information technology. The agenda focuses on the development of health information exchanges and the improvement of data liquidity.

A study published in JAMIA found that logs of the search activities of populations of computer users can contribute to drug safety surveillance. Internet-user information searches may provide early clues to adverse drug interactions.

UPMC partnered with Oracle to offer a cloud-based identity management solution to small and midsized healthcare providers. UPMC will help healthcare users implement Oracle Identity Management applications, which will help smaller practices manage identity and security issues at a more affordable price.

AMC Health announced that they will offer a money-back guarantee on their program to reduce hospital readmissions for high-risk patients. The guarantee offers a full refund if readmissions don’t decline by at least 10 percent within 90 days of deployment using a proven interactive voice response (IVR) program with case management initially deployed by the Geisinger Health Plan (GHP) and AMC Health.

A study published in the journal Circulation found that home blood pressure (BP) monitoring led to greater BP reductions, superior BP control, and higher patient satisfaction than usual care. The study was conducted using Heart360, an online tool to track and manage heart health.

Alexander Tsiaras, founder & CEO of TheVisualMD, won the 2013 Satava Award for the development and use of advanced technology for dynamic visualizations of the human body. TheVisualMD offers health information as a rich visual experience.

Wrist-based health tracker, Basis, raised $11.5M in Series B funding. Key investors include Mayfield Fund, DCM, and Norwest Venture Partners. The company also expanded its advisory board to include healthy living expert, Deepak Chopra and Esther Dyson, a technology analyst.

AT&T’s mobile health (mHealth) solution will automatically connect people in distress to medical assistance by tracking their location in real time. The solution, part of AT&T’s complete suite of remote patient monitoring (RPM) care, demoed at HIMSS 2013.

EHR vendor Allscripts acquired dbMotion, a healthcare interoperability software maker, and Jardogs, a patient engagement software vendor. The acquisitions are a part of Allscripts’ plan to invest about $500M this year to expands its current product line.

According to ONC’s latest data brief, hospital adoption of EHR system more than tripled since 2009. The brief also stated that adoption of EHR technology to meet Meaningful Use objectives grew substantially from 72% in 2011 to 85% in 2012.

Leica Biosystems, provider of digital pathology systems, collaborated with Dell to create a scalable medical cloud network. This network allows Chinese physicians access to U.S. healthcare organizations for real time, expert review of pathology cases.