Mike Miliard

Managing a hospital's operations means dealing with data. Lots and lots of data. That's where executive information systems come in. And as healthcare moves towards hugely different paradigms of care delivery and reimbursement, they're only going to become more crucial to efficient operations.

A quick look at the headlines lately shows that "big data" is a big deal. Healthcare is just starting to realize the potential of gathering, drilling down, mining and analyzing those massive troves of information – and more and more signs point to big data analytics making a big difference.

When people are "moved into a medical environment from their home, it's very disorienting," says Joshua Jacobs, vice president of Windsor Healthcare, a Norwood, N.J.-based recovery, rehabilitation and nursing facility. "When they're taken out of their routine, it's very easy to lose focus."

TriZetto subsidiary Gateway EDI announced Tuesday its acquisition of Sacramento, Calif.-based NHXS, which develops software meant to help medical practices manage physician reimbursement and recover lost revenues.

Data warehousing and decision support aren't exactly new. "Hospitals have had data warehouses for a long time," says Mary Griskewicz, senior director of health information systems at HIMSS. "I was working at a hospital 15 years ago, and we had one."

For a healthcare industry living in mortal fear of data breaches and HIPAA violations, the word “hacker” would seem to be an anathema.

Deepak Aatresh co-founder of startup design/build firm Aditazz, came originally from the semiconductor industry, but since founding the company, he's been thinking a lot about architecture and construction.

This past fall, as the academic year got under way, medical schools across the country, from Brown to Stanford, were tossing out heavy and expensive textbooks in favor of fully-loaded and interactive iPads. Now that spring is here, it's time for the iPad to graduate: moving out of the classroom and into the clinical setting.

We're living in an iOS world nowadays, but sometimes, to look at them, it seems EHRs are stuck in a Windows '97 rut.

The National Quality Forum (NQF) approved for endorsement several sets of quality measures in April, addressing areas such as perinatal and renal care and how resources are put to use in care delivery.