The progress toward defining meaningful use has been impressive, but the timeline may be too compressed for many, said Steven Stack, MD, member of the board of trustees at the American Medical Association (AMA), last week, during the eHealth Initiative's second Webinar on meaningful use. Also, to digitize 20 percent of the U.S. economy in a three- to five-year period, theres not enough workforce to do that, Stack said.

While the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and its Center for Health IT supports the goals of the new meaningful use regulations announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the organization stated that the regulations, as proposed, pose hurdles that challenge small- and medium-size medical practices ability to achieve all that is required to receive the incentive payments.

The board of directors of the health nonprofit eHealth Initiative andFoundation Tuesday announced the appointment of Jennifer Covich Bordenick as CEO, effective immediately.

Nonprofit standards development organization Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) has set the adoption of program criteria for 2010 accreditation programs.

Axolotl has announced it successfully passed testing at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North American Connectathon event in Chicago.

Aggressive interoperability timelines require specific implementation guides and reference implementations, wrote John D. Halamka, MD, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, in his blog, on which he summarized the comments he received from colleagues concerning the interim final rule and notice of proposed rule-making for the proposed meaningful use definitions.

Misys successfully tested two open-source components needed to run a health information exchange (HIE) at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North America Connectathon in Chicago.

E-prescribing could help improve coordination of patient care, although barriers including cost and lack of standards need to be worked out, said speakersata Webinar hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit eHealth Initiative.