St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, a 431-bed facility in Syracuse, N.Y., on Aug. 27, helped its neighbor Welch Allyn, a global manufacturer of medical diagnostic equipment headquartered in Skaneateles Falls, N.Y., unveil what they both billed as a cure for vital sign documentation.

The U.S. ambulatory EHR market, which was at $1.3 billion in 2009, is forecast to reach $2.6 billion in 2012, according to new analysis from research firm Frost & Sullivan.

The rate of electronic health record adoption among U.S. physicians expects to increase over the next two to five years due to a combination of changes caused by healthcare reform and financial subsidies from the HITECH program, the report notes.

The Health IT Policy Committee has created a task force to pursue the use of directories across state HIEs to support provider and patient look-up as well as to enhance public health reporting.

For health information exchanges to gain a footing, experts say, states will have to make sure physicians can access provider directories. Without these electronic listings of providers and patients across a state or region, vital health records and messages might not get to its proper destination.
 

The convergence of personal health records and mobile communication devices may offer the right tool to engage consumers to use technology for self-care, taking cost out of the healthcare system, according to a new Deloitte Issue Brief from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

Spending on state and local health IT systems will increase by 19 percent over the next five years, forecasts a new report from market research firm INPUT.

The GasthuisZusters Antwerpen (GZA) Hospital Group in Belgium has implemented a new temperature monitoring solution across its three hospitals. The GZA Hospital Group is now using the Wi-Fi RFID technology to monitor and manage the temperature in refrigerators that contain temperature-sensitive items, such as pharmaceuticals and blood.
 

The University of Texas at Austin's new Health Information Technology program is being bolstered by a $2.7 million federal grant that will support four programs aimed at "fast tracking" university graduates into the field of healthcare information technology.

The program graduated its first class of 54 students this past July.

U.S. hospitals have a lot of work to do to transform the current paper-based healthcare system to an electronic one, say the authors of a new Harvard study.

The study, which was conducted by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), found adoption of basic or comprehensive EHRs by U.S. hospitals increased modestly from 8.7 percent in 2008 to 11.9 percent in 2009.

Maine has won approval from the federal government for the full use of its grant of nearly $6.6 million to expand and coordinate health information technology throughout the state, Gov. John E. Baldacci announced on Wednesday. 

According to officials, Maine is the sixth state that has had its implementation plan approved by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). Currently, Maryland, New Mexico and Utah have had their plans approved. The other two states have yet to officially announce their approval.

Lockheed Martin, helping to further accelerate the advancement of digital health records and secure health information exchanges, has announced two new agreements to support the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). The contracts, which were awarded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), total $9 million over two years.

Comparing vendor prices at the time of a purchase is just the start for hospitals and health systems that want to get their money's worth from an EMR system, concludes a new report from research firm KLAS. Epic and MEDITECH come out on top for meeting expectations.
 

The Department of Health and Human Services has made available an online tool from its Healthcare.gov Web site that streamlines the public's search for insurance coverage options.

Healthcare.gov offers consumers a one-stop-shop of public and private insurance coverage options and, when they are created, a gateway to state health insurance exchange portals. Based on answers to a series of questions, the finder produces a menu of potential coverage choices personalized for the user.

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, of Horsham, Pa., has announced its successful collaboration with clients that received assistance through the Primary Care Information Project (PCIP), a bureau of the NYC Health Department. In January 2009, PCIP launched Health eHearts, a pilot pay-for-quality program administered by the Fund for Public Health in New York that incentivizes practices using an electronic health record to help patients improve heart health.

Ingenix Consulting has announced the launch of its Strategic Technology Solutions practice. The new service aims to help healthcare executives create health IT investment and implementation strategies that enable their organizations to improve patient outcomes, enhance organizational performance and prepare for fundamental shifts occurring in healthcare nationwide.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently announced that the VA Medical Center in Indianapolis will partner with the Indiana Health Information Exchange on a pilot to securely exchange electronic health data via the Nationwide Health Information Network.

The pilot is planned to run through 2012.

The Alabama Medicaid Agency has awarded a $135 million, eight-year contract to HP to upgrade and manage the agency's Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS).

The new contract extends HP's 30-year relationship with the Alabama Medicaid Agency, which oversees the Medicaid program for more than 900,000 state residents. HP processed nearly 32 million Medicaid claims for Alabama healthcare providers in 2009.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) is in the midst of handling the repercussions of a recent IT infrastructure failure, which  coincided with an increase in record requests as students are preparing to enroll and return to school.

HIMSS Analytics Europe will introduce awards for European Hospitals that have achieved the highest scores on the EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM). They'll be unveiled at the upcoming HIMSS Europe Health IT Leadership Summit in Rome from September 29 to October 1.
 
HIMSS Analytics Europe recently launched the European EMR Adoption Model and is currently surveying hospitals across 12 European countries. Initial findings will be presented at the upcoming Leadership Summit, alongside the announcement of the criteria needed to achieve the highest level of EMR adoption.

The federal Health IT Policy Committee is backing a plan to build a federal database of business rules that states could use to help determine the eligibility for Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs.

The database would make enrollment data for insurance and healthcare programs accessible to all states. The states could use the data to build electronic health insurance exchanges required by the recent health reform law.

New products entering the RIS market and vendors expanding their EMR and PACS client bases with integrated solutions suggest that radiology information systems are taking a renewed priority in purchasing decisions, a new report from research firm KLAS concludes.