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(SPONSORED) CMC is a clinical approach to care grounded in personalized, urgent-care plans developed with patients by their doctors and nurses. The plan details the patient's diagnosis and treatment, contact information, their wishes and their escalation treatment plan.

The telemedicine tech vendor is betting the ubiquitous Microsoft systems will enable a more robust, secure and scalable collaboration platform.

The EHR vendor and analytics company sign an agreement to facilitate greater clinical insights for caregivers within the records system.

(SPONSORED) The average global cost of a data breach as a result of a lost or stolen record is $154.

Humana subsidiary says the three apps use the HealthLogix technology platform to tackle population health, patient engagement and mobile health.

Health Catalyst has raised $70 million in its fifth round of funding, bringing the total of venture capital it has attracted to $235 million. Norwest Venture Partners, the lead investor in three previous rounds of funding, and UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC, co-led the round. UPMC is also a Health Catalyst customer and technology development partner. Also contributing are Health Catalyst customers MultiCare Health System and OSF Healthcare, new investor Leerink Capital as well as existing investors Sequoia Capital, Sands Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, CHV Capital (an Indiana University Health Company), Partners HealthCare, EPIC Venture Partners, Leavitt Equity Partners and Tenaya Capital. [Also: Eyeing IPO, Health Catalyst lands $70M] The company will use the new capital to expand its product line. “Our new products, funded by this round, will enable better, faster decisions, from the population level to the individual patient level,” Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton said. Areas of particular interest, Burton said, are population health management, care management and costing – “precise costing such that you really know what it costs to deliver specific procedures in specific locations.” There’s no standing still for Health Catalyst, a company inspired by the analytics that were being honed at Intermountain Healthcare back in the day when that kind of analysis was done on spreadsheets. Today, Health Catalyst is redefining what it means to improve healthcare outcomes and keep the lid on cost. It is also shaking up how a health IT enterprise does business, having persuaded many of its high-profile clients – Allina Health, Partners HealthCare and UPMC, among them  – to not only work with the company to develop new products, but also to invest big time. “Their investment is very, very meaningful to the company, and their involvement fits within the construct that has really served the company well for many years,” Burton said. “We have found that having mix strategic investors along with pure financial investors provides a healthy balance and complementary strengths. It opens the doors for collaboration and co-development that you wouldn’t normally see being pursued between a health system and a vendor.” Last year Health Catalyst increased the number of patients served by its customers to more 65 million, doubled its bookings backlog, doubled its revenue, nearly doubled its customer footprint and increased the number of employees nationwide from about 230 to more than 400. Burton has been open about Health Catalyst’s plans to go public – though no formal decision has been made. The board will make that decision, he said, and he is only one member. “But, I believe that’s the path that we’re on,” he said. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “The decision to go public will not be because we need funding,” he added. “This round of capital is designed to give us the balance-sheet strength to get to the cash flow-sustainable territory on our own. As a cash flow sustainable entity, we will not be required to raise capital through the public markets.” Judy Hanover, research director for IDC Health Insights' Healthcare Provider IT Strategies practice, told Healthcare IT News, there are many steps in the data warehousing/analytics process that can fail “even if the tools are great, the implementation is stellar, but the folks in the hospitals that make decisions don’t use the information.” But what Health Catalyst seems to do well, she said, “is that last step of turning the results into reasonable and productive and beneficial decision making at the hospital.” Twitter: @HealthITNews

Check this post often as we update it from the dozens of photos conference attendees are sharing from the show.

As part of its ongoing efforts to help healthcare provider organizations enhance their IT strategies and better realize value from their IT investments, HIMSS Analytics is unveiling at HIMSS16 the Next EMRAM Criteria and Value Score. EMRAM is HIMSS Analytics’ Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. And Value Score is described by HIMSS Analytics as healthcare’s first international quality measurement for the value of health IT – building on the EMRAM and HIMSS’ Value Suite – to help providers optimize and use IT to improve clinical and financial outcomes and drive efficiencies in care. The Next EMRAM Criteria is a major update to EMRAM. HIMSS Analytics is shifting some existing technologies and practices down its seven-stage ladder, moving new ones in, better accounting for differences in the delivery of healthcare around the world, and adding significant new material centered on security. HIMSS Analytics is launching the Next EMRAM Criteria at HIMSS16, but added that it still is working through details on some of the revised criteria. “It’s been an exhaustive process: gathering feedback from the provider, administrative health and vendor communities around the world, but by and large the criteria is fundamentally inked. The intent is to create a true global comparison,” said Blain Newton, executive vice president at HIMSS Analytics. “The previous EMRAM was built 10 years ago, and while it became an effective tool and an industry standard – to the point where bond rating agencies ask for proof of Stage 7 – medicine is practiced differently in different parts of the world, and EMRAM initially was pretty specific to North America.” Newton said the Next EMRAM Criteria reflects the current state of the market, so things that were cutting edge 10 years ago now are moved down the scale and emerging practices and technologies have been moved in at different stages. For example, picture archiving and communication systems, which were not as commonplace 10 years ago as they are today, have been moved down to an earlier stage, while such things as clinician documentation and business continuity services have been given new emphasis. “And we’ve added a significant amount of material around privacy and security, which was a missing piece for us,” Newton said. “It’s a big update to the original criteria. But health systems performing well now will still be performing well with the rollout of the Next EMRAM Criteria.” Also at HIMSS16, HIMSS Analytics is officially launching Value Score, the next generation of several HIMSS-developed standards and resources that have served as health IT adoption models for providers over the last decade. EMRAM, for instance, has helped hospitals and clinical practices track and benchmark EHR adoption and utilization goals, and the HIMSS Health IT Value Suite and Value STEPS have provided a framework and vocabulary for providers to articulate strategies. As the market continues to evolve, Value Score will give providers a way to look at their entire organization and capture a comprehensive view of how they achieve value beyond the electronic health record, HIMSS Analytics said. “Value Score is the capstone to all of the offerings,” Newton said. “The other models focus on the adoption and implementation of technology. Value Score is focused on the optimization of that technology to achieve and realize value. It is an objective measure of discrete examples of realizing clinical, financial and patient engagement satisfaction, and realizing value by leveraging IT. We’re not only looking to get to Stage 7, but also to optimize and use IT to truly improve care, reduce costs and increase satisfaction. Value Score is a way to capture and normalize that concept.” While Value Score measures what is happening today, room has been made for innovation, Newton added, including a score specific to that topic. “We looked to the folks in the vanguard doing things we haven’t seen before,” he said. “The purpose of Value Score’s innovation score is to push the market forward, so eventually innovation filters down into the core model, which then can evolve and help those not in the vanguard to achieve more and raise the bar for everybody." HIMSS Analytics is in booth 1054 on the Exhibit Hall floor. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT  This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

New tool analyzes data to pinpoint care gaps and identify service lines where patients are seeking care elsewhere. 

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute announced a plan to make it easy for individuals to access data in their electronic health records and share it for research that could improve care for their conditions.