News

In case anyone was still wondering about a leadership vacuum at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Karen DeSalvo, MD, is still national coordinator -- a fact that was in evidence Wednesday at the close of the American Medical Informatics Association's annual conference.

Jay Radcliffe breaks into medical devices for a living, testing for vulnerabilities as a security researcher. He's also a diabetic and gives himself insulin injections instead of relying on an automated insulin pump, which he says could be hacked.

As Penn Medicine enters the home stretch of formulating its bring-your-own-device policy, Associate CIO of Technology and Infrastructure John Donohue discusses the finer points of crafting smart BYOD rules, from addressing governance up-front to getting early support from the CEO.

At the American Medical Informatics Association's annual symposium today, developers and backers of public application programming interfaces talked about how the standard could speed interoperability with add-on apps to enterprise EHRs, and help make those bulky systems more nimble.

What are the responsibilities of covered entities when an encrypted laptop or device is stolen, but the passcodes are handed over in the theft as well? A recent robbery reported by Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital may shed some light on these tricky situations.

We often hear about streams of data. Sometimes, the flood can seem like a data deluge. In its new analytics project with EMC Corporation, Partners HealthCare extends the watery metaphor, with a new initiative meant for shared use: the Partners Data Lake.

The collections process is ripe for innovation, on both the payer and provider side. Increasingly, savvy providers are using health IT to broaden their access to and knowledge about their patient populations, with an eye toward greater success with bill collection.

Due in part to evolving regulatory and health IT landscapes, the cloud market is poised for a double digit growth phase, new analysis suggests. Don't be fooled, though. Some big time barriers remain and have in many ways stymied the industry's shift over to the cloud.

Without good data, patient-centeredness is just a buzzword. And without a patient-centric focus and proper organization, data can be rather useless. That was the message Sunday from Amy Abernethy, MD, who delivered the opening keynote address at the American Medical Informatics Association's annual symposium.

As ONC puts forth the government's long-term vision for nationwide interoperability, four industry stakeholders -- the EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup, HIMSS, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise and ICSA Labs -- have joined forces to tackle more immediate challenges of data exchange across state lines.