Information Technology news and information

As political debate continues in nearly half of the states in the country over whether to expand their Medicaid programs, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that her agency was open to discussing with state leaders their proposals on how to provide healthcare to their poorest residents.
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Surescripts, the for-profit electronic prescription network owned by pharmacy associations and pharmacy benefit management companies, is adding 19 state, regional and private health information exchanges to its portfolio of heath information exchange services.
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The United States has spent a lot of time and money to digitize healthcare records, but the effort has not gotten very far yet. Electronic health records in the United States are supposed to take full effect by 2015. Without that technical backbone, the promise of the Patient Protection and...
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Does the federally sponsored Direct messaging protocol pose an existential threat to vendors of health information exchange software? Time will tell, according to the author of a new market research report on health information exchanges.
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Precision for Medicine, which provides specialized services and infrastructure to support life science companies and next generation medical products, has named Eric Perakslis senior adviser for bioinformatics and information technology.
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A premature baby born at high altitude faces challenges uncommon among newborns in Denver that often can't be treated by rural physicians. But expanded technology is helping beam the expertise of neonatal specialists in the city into critical-care situations at 33 remote hospitals in Colorado,...
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Medical-device maker Medtronic, Minneapolis, is making a push into the world of pure-play health information technology with the acquisition of telehealth and patient remote-monitoring services provider Cardiocom, a privately held firm based in Chanhassen, Minn.
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With the Aug. 1 implementation of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, the CMS has launched two mobile smartphone applications to help physicians, drug and medical-device manufacturers, and group purchasing organizations track payments and other transfers of value.
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WebMD Health Corp., which provides health information through online portals, mobile platforms and publications, has appointed David Schlanger CEO and Dr. Steven Zatz president, effective Aug. 11.
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The expanding number of doctors offering appointments through videoconferencing, called telemedicine, is expected to see a sharp increase in Kentucky.
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