Tom Sullivan

Microsoft has been building health-centric features into its stable of products and heading into HIMSS16 is also hoping to tap into the show’s overarching trends: patient engagement, telehealth and wearables. Acknowledging that Microsoft has historically been known as the Windows and Office company, Microsoft communications manager Greg Ormsby said the company is looking to build on those platforms in healthcare. "What’s changing are the emerging care scenarios," Ormsby said. "We’re looking to augment that shift." See all of our HIMSS16 previews At the upcoming HIMSS16, for instance, Ormsby said Team Redmond will be showcasing demonstrations of a partnership that will see MDLive using Skype for Business to conduct telehealth consults between doctors and patients as well as physicians and specialists. That’s one example. Ormsby said that Microsoft is set to release the Surface Hub this quarter and that collaboration tool will be a key piece of the company’s aim to "transform the hospital room." "Patient engagement really rests on helping doctors do their jobs more efficiently so they can help patients during the visit," Ormsby said. On the back end, Microsoft is girding to make the doctor’s experience with any EHR fluid so they can take notes, change apps naturally within a tablet, PC or phone, and access information they need in what Ormsby said should be an unburdensome way. [What healthcare organizations need to know about Windows 10 and Office 16.]  And while much work remains, by Microsoft and other wearable providers, to determine how endpoint devices can be integrated with healthcare organizations other data sources, Ormsby said Microsoft is seeing partners and customers looking into use cases, such as chronic care — and the devices evolving as well.  "Microsoft Band is a fitness and wellness wearable, we target that stay-fit crowd," Ormsby said.  "But one would argue it has the ability to do a lot, like a mobile health app — but that’s to be determined still." Microsoft will be in booth 3832. Twitter: @SullyHIT

Whether meaningful use triggered a desperately-needed onslaught of healthcare digitization or effectively stifled innovation by incentivizing the deployment of kludgy electronic health records software -- or both -- is likely to be a matter of some debate for years to come.

In the ongoing battle at the small end of the electronic health records market, drchrono claims to have struck new ground by bringing its EHR to the iPhone.

Though many think remote patient monitoring is the future of healthcare, a new report by Chilmark Research claims issues with implementation are keeping providers from jumping in despite its many promises.

The NYU Langone app joins the growing cadre of health-centric tools that run on Apple's hardware and ResearchKit software. The initial five apps targeted patients with asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson's.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to ratchet up its two-year-old security offering, dubbed the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, and has put out a public call for user feedback.

The population health management vendor announced an open platform for tying together multiple data sources for predictive modeling.

Google's Alphabet unit christened its so-called "moonshot" health laboratory with the name Verily. The lab houses four main teams working on hardware, software, clinical, and science projects.

SAP on Tuesday announced two new products for housing and analyzing clinical and genomics data. The tools are built on top of its HANA in-memory computing platform.

Some major hospital systems are seeing an increase in ransomware attacks, which is forcing them to ask a difficult question: give into criminal demands or not?