Mary Mosquera

The Government Accountability Office criticized the group directing the project to tie together the electronic health record systems operated by the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments.

The Commerce Department's National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) plans to develop standards to help evaluate the ease-of-use of healthcare IT systems.

HITSP, an organization that did much to sort through and harmonize health IT standards over the last five years and whose work provided an early foundation for “meaningful use,” will begin winding down its operations after this week.

Quality measures that a federal advisory panel recommended but that were dropped from proposed rules for the meaningful use of healthcare IT represent a missed opportunity to significantly improve patient care, according to members of the Health IT Policy Committee.

The Food and Drug Administration awarded a $72 million contract to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to develop a test version of the FDA's Sentinel system, an electronic network designed to sift health data for threats to medical product safety.

The Veterans Affairs Department and healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente have begun to share electronic health record information of patients who receive care services from both providers in the San Diego, Calif., area.

Prospective applicants for $60 million in grants to conduct advanced research in health information technology learned Monday that any of their findings should be able to be put to practical use quickly to help extend the meaningful uses of electronic health records.

National Health IT Coordinator David Blumenthal, MD, emphasized Thursday that quality measures are at the heart of his office's strategy for using IT to transform the U.S. healthcare system.

Health IT advocates on Capitol Hill Tuesday pledged to keep pushing for IT measures in healthcare reform and other pending legislation, despite the commitment already included in the economic stimulus package.

The Health IT Standards Committee Tuesday endorsed a set of security and privacy standards for electronic health record systems that it said would get progressively tougher without holding back wider health information sharing.