The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has organized a standards Enrollment Workgroup under the auspices of the HIT Policy Committee.

Healthcare management company MEDecision has been awarded a contract by the state of Minnesota to provide the technology for a personal health record (PHR) program being developed for state employees and their dependents.

Vangent has entered a strategic partnership with Orion Health that will leverage Vangents information management and strategic business process services and Orions experience in designing, implementing and operating a secure health information exchange.

Health IT company MEDecision has named Eric Demers senior vice president (SVP) of life sciences.

Healthcare organizations in California, Colorado, Illinois, Montana and Texas recently announced health information exchange (HIE) initiatives, and their vendor picks indicate the market is not consolidated yet. The size and scope of projects also vary tremendously: One size may never fit all HIE, but clearly there are many vendor options.

The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) is a set of policy standards and services that enable the internet to secure meaningful exchange to achieve the objectives of the HITECH Act. However, this network of networks wont succeed unless trust is built into every facet of the information exchange, said Mariann Yeager, NHIN Policy and Governance Lead at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and Steven Gravely, JD, a partner at the law firm of Troutman Sanders, during a recent webinar.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that Geisinger Health System will receive $16 million to create the Keystone Beacon Community, one of 15 Beacon Community initiatives across the U.S. to harness health IT to demonstrably improve patient care. Geisinger will use the grant to extend the Keystone Health Information Exchange (KeyHIE) and other health IT initiatives to five Central Pennsylvania counties and deliver improvements in patient outcomes within a three-year period.

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body, has submitted comments to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the proposed establishment of certification programs for health IT by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT, Department of Health and Human Services.