Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Cloud-based athenahealth is expanding its portfolio to include machine learning and artificial intelligence with its acquisition of analytics startup Arsenal Health. Arsenal's Smart Scheduling tool has already been effective with athenahealth's providers, officials said. The acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, will move Arsenal from a third-party vendor to a native capability available for all athenahealth's customers through its athenaCoordinator network. athenahealth also sees value as a potential "on-ramp to the machine learning, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence space in healthcare," said Doran Robinson, vice president of athenaCoordinator, in a press statement. In the future, athenahealth's officials say they hope the acquisition will accelerate the company's analytics and AI capabilities, broadening insights and enhancing offerings for its 74 million patient records. "The prospect of building on Arsenal Health’s technology and combining it with our own valuable data to positively impact care and expand the power of our network is extremely compelling," said Robinson. Arsenal Health was athenahealth's first investment through its More Disruption Please initiative, which drives decisions based on three pillars: the MDP Accelerator, athenahealth Marketplace and MDP Network. "The company is a testimonial to what we’re trying to do with our "More Disruption Please" program – provide young health tech companies the opportunity to develop and scale with athenahealth’s support and resources," he added. "By joining athenahealth, we believe we can accelerate our growth while effectively testing and advancing our predictive analytics technology," said Arsenal Health CEO Chris Moses in a statement. "To date, our success lies in our ability to track client performance, learn the intricacies of how providers work and ultimately predict their needs."

The first quarter of this year saw a 27 percent spike in health IT venture capital and the most M&A activity in a single quarter, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group.

The aim is to save $25 million annually and Health Catalyst’s profits are directly tied to MultiCare meeting that goal.

More than 1,000 patients of the Florida Department of Health Clinics in Palm Beach County could be at risk of identity theft after a recent medical records breach, department officials announced Monday.

The industry veteran said he envisions a focus on ‘life experience’ in healthcare that delivers precise treatments that are better suited to patients’ specific needs.

The new model is expected to work hand in hand with data and technologies to boost care, lower cost, and advance the industry toward becoming a learning health system.

Family Medical Specialists in Florida is using care management technology to get paid under CPT code 99490, and the practice has already gotten buy-in from almost every eligible patient.

Defense Department is on track to rollout new electronic health records software in the Pacific Northwest later in 2016, and officials are calling the project a new beginning toward interoperable, safe and secure patient records.

Company executives say that joining Cerner, Epic, Meditech and others in promising to use agreed upon standard and not block data is merely formalizing what they already practice.  

The U.S. Department of Defense says it will implement secure messaging tools as part of the deal to help doctors better coordinate care.