The American Medical Association has joined with Google to kick off a contest to collect ideas of novel approaches to improving mobile health technology, including wearables and smartphone apps, to improve the flow of information between patients and physicians. The goal is to streamline technology to improve management of chronic diseases.

These “human interfaces” need to know EHR technology thoroughly to bridge IT professionals with clinicians.

As healthcare reform and big data in medical imaging converge, strategies to facilitate image exchange, mobile access and patient empowerment are essential to improve the quality of patient care. Learn how cloud services can enable improved levels of service, reduce total cost of ownership to redirect capital to other patient-care initiatives and unlock new financial models for growth.

A phased approach to incorporating health information exchange into disaster preparedness efforts will be helpful, according to the findings published in the final report from the Southeast Regional HIT-HIE Collaboration project on Health Information Exchange in Disaster Preparedness and Response.

Gain some practical advice on implementing a private health information exchange from Denise Abraham, the health information exchange coordinator for The Washington Hospital, a 224-bed hospital in Washington, Pa., and Charles R. Vargo, executive director of the Washington Physician Hospital Organization Inc. (WPHO), which is a joint venture with the hospital and the 250 physicians on the hospital medical staff. 

 ORLANDO, Fla.In 2002, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles faced a health IT fiasco. The medical center invested $34 million in a computerized physician order entry system based on minimal physician input. Clinical staff revolted and the project was scrapped after three months. Savvy use of social media can not only help health IT leaders circumvent such losses but also build clinical buy-in, according to a June 7 presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM).

In a lively roundtable discussion, David Cochran, MD, and Robert Fassett, MD, (left to right) touch upon HIEs, ACOs and the need for cleaner data to improve the quality of U.S. healthcare.

DR Systems is exhibiting release 8.2 of its Unity RIS/PACS platform at the 2009 Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) conference this week in Charlotte, N.C.