In a deeply felt address to the health care IT community gathered at the HIMSS conference in Orlando, Florida, on February 23, outgoing National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal, MD, told attendees that just two years after the passage of the HITECH Act, health care providers in America have entered the age of

The General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization Inc. (Mass General) have agreed to pay the U.S. government $1 million to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced yesterday.

BRIT Systems, Inc. and RelWare earlier this week announced a partnership agreement under whose terms the two companies will provide an integrated, Web-based EHR/RIS/PACS solution to hospitals, imaging clinics, and large group practices. Comprising BRIT’s RoentgenWorks PACS/RIS and RelWare’s ONC-Certified EXR EHR, the joint offering will allow users

While specialized workstations have traditionally been used to generate apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measurements necessary for quantitative analysis of diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI-MR), PACS software works equally well in accomplishing this task, according to a study conducted by a research team from the Department of Radiology of

GE Healthcare earlier this week announced that it is collaborating with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to explore the efficacy of actionable health alerts delivered instantly to physicians’ EMRs.

New efforts are warranted to develop and refine quality-of-care and other performance measures that can assure new payment models will improve medical care without harming patients, according to a study recently released by RAND Corporation.
 
The study reveals that although certain currently employed quality measurement tools may be useful to new

Radiologists who interpret a high volume of mammograms may not detect more cancers, but are better at determining which suspicious lesions are not malignant, according to a new study published online and in the April print edition of Radiology.

Implementing healthcare reform and meeting stage 1 "meaningful use" requirements comprise the top two priorities of healthcare IT professionals, reveals a survey released earlier this week by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) at its annual meeting.