The “internet of things,” or IoT, is in its infancy everywhere in healthcare, according to Warren Averett security services director Paul Perry. For those on the finance side of hospitals and health systems, he says this connected technology offers great opportunity to those who realize its potential.

The combination of precision medicine and information technology (IT) has the potential to improve patient outcomes. But many healthcare organizations are slow to pursue integration. A recently released report, “2017 Precision Medicine Study," from Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) outlines how healthcare organizations view the expansion and improvement of IT with precision medicine.

Reducing funding to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) from $60 million to $38 million, as the Trump administration has proposed, may hamper advancements in interoperability and the goals of 21st Century Cures Act, according to several leading health IT groups.

Under President Donald Trump's proposed budget, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will lose $22 million in funding. The 36 percent reduction cuts the $60 million for ONC to $38 million in 2018.

The Health 2.0 conferences, which focused on start-up technologies in healthcare, will now be under the banner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has acquired the conference component of Health 2.0, focused on start-up digital technologies in healthcare.

The next head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will be Donald Rucker, MD, a choice the industry was quick to praise once word of the pick leaked on March 31 due to an updated listing in the HHS employee directory.

In a March 21 blog post, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced updates to its Safety Assurance Factors for Electronic Health Record Resilience (SAFER) guidelines, aimed at easing safety concerns associated with electronic health records (EHRs).