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Information technology will be an important focus for the state of Georgia and a leading driver of its economic recovery, said Governor Nathan Deal on Monday.

Healthcare in the United States has its own myriad, manifest and much-discussed problems. But they're nothing compared to those afflicting the primitive and limited systems in many other parts of the world.

“There has never been a better time to be innovating in health and wellness,” Steve Krein, CEO of the just-launched StartUp Health, said last month.

After completing a successful pilot program with 500 physicians, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBSGa) has teamed up with Availity, a health information network that health plan officials say will streamline business processes between more than 26,000 of Georgia's healthcare providers and BCBSGa, the state's largest health plan.

Personalized medicine needs a lot more exposition before it comes part of the mainstream, but a group of dedicated professionals is determined to make sure that it arrives as soon as possible.

With hospitals "raising the bar" to meet meaningful use requirements, new positions are being created within IT departments that have a focus on quality and data, says one consultant.

– No matter what happens politically or in policy circles, "seismic shifts" are going to occur in healthcare, and IT needs to be a major part of reshaping the landscape, according to H. Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) approved in June the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the ONC-approved accreditor (ONC-AA) for the permanent certification program for health information technology.

The hours-long wait in the emergency department is the standard of almost any hospital horror story – for the hospital as well as the patient. It’s frustrating for the patient who wants to be treated, and for the hospital administrator who wants to provide quality care and ensure a good rapport with the community.

– During the Premier Breakthroughs conference on June 15, representatives from Providence Health & Services detailed the benefits of installing a collaborative perinatal wide area network (WAN) to connect the system’s five hospitals in southern California.