Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Karen DeSalvo, MD, appears to have the right background to understand the challenges facing the healthcare system. Beginning with her childhood experience as a public health clinic patient and including work as an internist managing a hospital's medical records committee, she has direct experience with the system at all levels.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released what it calls Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience guides: nine toolkits to help providers make safer use of electronic health records and other technology.

As far as Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, is concerned, the $34 billion health IT and electronic medical record incentive program was a grave misstep for the healthcare industry -- but not necessarily for the reasons one might think.

Electronic health record incentive payments to eligible docs and hospitals continue to climb into the new year. The "inexorable progress" of the federal EHR incentive program continues, with payments to providers moving ever closer to $20 billion.

Health IT is where the money's at -- at least in 2013, which saw venture capital funding nearly double from the previous year, according to a new industry report released Monday.

Edward W. Marx, senior vice president and chief information officer at Texas Health Resources, one of the largest faith-based, nonprofit healthcare delivery systems in the U.S., has been named the 2013 John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year, an award given jointly by CHIME and HIMSS.

Meaningful use -- it's not just for healthcare providers anymore. Patients are paying attention to meaningful use of electronic health data; they're understanding, and now they want it.

Electronic health records may be doing great things for patient care, but they have also made it easier to commit fraud, according to the findings of a new report from the Office of Inspector General.

Phil Curran, Chief Information Security Officer at Cooper Health, shares his thoughts on trust in cloud technology, vetting vendors and crafting Business Associate Agreements in the wake of the new HIPAA Omnibus Rule.

The Mass HIway Health Information Exchange has entered into the next phase, with new tools for locating and retrieving medical records across the state. Gov. Deval L. Patrick and healthcare leaders gathered at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston on Jan. 8 to show how data exchange works -- on a secure network with the click of a button.