News
Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, urged his mHealth Summit audience Dec. 10 to think of the smartphone as a modern-day Aladdin's lamp: Touch it, and all sorts of magic can happen. Denmark Minister of Health Astrid Krag talked about Denmark's initiative to reconfigure its healthcare system.
In the wake of HealthCare.gov's botched launch, analysts -- and Congressional leaders -- contend the private sector would have done it better. That's not necessarily so, says Karen Evans, who offers five tips for successful rollouts.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has big plans for Blue Button, the mechanism that enables consumers to securely download their health information, as part of an overarching effort to enhance patient engagement.
The mHealth Alliance is celebrating its fifth year of coordinating mHealth projects around the world. Patricia Mechael, the Alliance's executive director, discusses her life and career, and explains why she's driven to expand mHealth adoption in low- and middle-income countries.
It's an ironic story. The Office for Civil Rights, the division of HHS responsible for investigating HIPAA privacy and security violations, is now facing scrutiny after its own security practices failed to meet federal requirements.
There it was -- the clear-as-a-bell prediction. Call it the "wow factor." Andrew Watson, MD, medical director of the Center for Connected Medicine at UPMC, made an assertion about the future of digital health at the mHealth Summit on Dec. 9 that sent a hushed "wow" rippling across the room.
The numbers do the talking. There are 110 million sexually transmitted infections among women and men nationwide, with 20 million new STIs reported each year. New mobile health innovations, however, are seeking to bring these numbers down, big time.
"I'm surprised that we continue to see the status quo in revenue cycle management," says Sean Wieland, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, adding that, "If any other industry had a revenue cycle like that, we'd all be living like the Amish."
The mHealth Alliance plans to transition its base of operations in 2014 from the United Nations Foundation in Washington, DC to South Africa. In the coming months, the Alliance will finalize a full transition plan for 2014, including a proposal to co-locate with the Johannesburg-based Praekelt Foundation.
A joint CMS and ONC blog post today divulges the government's intentions to extend the timeline for meaningful use Stages 2 and 3. Under the revised schedule, Stage 2 would be extended through 2016 and Stage 3 would begin in 2017 for those providers that have completed at least two years in Stage 2.