Chip Means

Eager to capitalize on incentives offered through the federal government's definition of 'meaningful use' of healthcare IT, providers may find themselves evaluating their relationships with existing and new IT vendors.

Australia-based iSoft has signed an agreement to distribute Picis CareSuite solutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand.

Tech giant Siemens AG has agreed to license Microsoft's HealthVault application for use among German citizens.

INFINITT Healthcare, a developer of picture archiving and communication systems and other imaging and IT for healthcare, has announced the establishment of INFINITT SE Asia, based in Malaysia.

The demands of the National Health Service's ambitious information technology projects have led one Scotland-based trust to merge its multi-site helpdesk systems into a central location.

Thirty-seven hospitals and 300 clinics in South Africa will implement hospital information systems as part of an initiative to deliver EHRs to all patients in the Gauteng province.

Economically healthy industries empower workers to make decisions, compensate based on productivity and use a lot of information technology. The healthcare industry doesn't do any of this – yet.

Electronic technology will soon be considered as fundamental to medicine as the stethoscope, according to National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal, MD.

Sweden rolled out the first stage of the Swedish National Patient Summary initiative last month, according to the project's partnering IT vendors, InterSystems and Tieto. The nationwide EHR is billed as one of the first of its kind in the world.

Department of Defense agents last week searched the Malvern, Pa. headquarters of Siemens Medical Solutions in a reported investigation into a military contract Siemens was awarded in recent weeks.