Interoperability
The U.S. healthcare industry's billing and payment system is a horse-and-buggy in a world contemplating driverless cars, a new report from PwC asserts and calls for going to digital options stat.
Healthcare security professionals, listen up: This year, for the first time ever in a Ponemon Institute data breach report, cyberattacks topped the list as the No. 1 cause of healthcare breaches, surpassing all other categories.
ONC chief Karen DeSalvo, MD, has been nominated by President Obama to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. If she is confirmed by the Senate, she would step down as National Coordinator for Health IT, a post she has held since January 2014.
The IT infrastructure office at the Department of Health and Human Services has some serious security problems. This after the office received a less than satisfactory security report card from the Office of Inspector General this week.
IBM Watson Health is collaborating with Epic and Mayo Clinic to apply cognitive computing capabilities of Watson to EHRs, and also with 14 cancer institutions to reduce from weeks to minutes the ability to translate DNA insights.
Until physicians have EHRs that can talk with one another, the Precision Medicine Initiative introduced by President Barack Obama could be in jeopardy, Sen. Lamar Alexander said Tuesday.
Every 60 seconds, 232 computers are infected with malware; 12 websites are successfully hacked; more than 571 new websites are created, and 204 million emails are sent. Combine this with the fact that on the black market, medical records are worth $60, compared to credit card data, which typically sells for $20. "That makes us a significant targets," said Intermountain Healthcare's CISO Karl West.
At first glance, it might seem that there is no partnership Cerner would not entertain, but analysts point out recent deals with big-name health systems and with other vendors in the health IT marketplace are strategic and helping to position Cerner for the future.
Marking its entry into the patient identification market, health IT security company Imprivata has acquired Tampa, Florida-based HT Systems, which develops technology for palm-vein-based biometric patient ID.
HIMSS15 Social Media Ambassador Susan Hull, RN, MSN, comments on the advancement of the Blue Button initiative across the industry and the FHIR standards for interoperability.