From Maine rolling out a medical imaging archive to Ohio implementing an emergency department alert system to a study showing that the use of health information exchange (HIE) can curb unnecessary head CTs, HIE activity is chugging along at a brisk pace. In fact, the HIE market will experience massive growth in spending by 2014 even though industry technology executives are exploring adoption rather than implementation at this point, according to a new survey from Black Book Rankings.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT issued a request for information on the creation of a governance structure for the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) back in May. Now, the EHR Association is submitting its response, expressing appreciation that this is an RFI, not a notice of proposed rulemaking.

HERNDON, Va.As temperatures rose across the nation, so did opinions on health information exchanges (HIEs) in two panel discussions June 21 at the Healthcare IT Connect Summit. During the panels, the overriding consensus among participants is the need to build a use case for HIEs.

A new nationwide association, the Association of Regional Centers for Health IT (ARCH-IT), has been formed for the 62 regional extension centers that provide assistance and guidance for the adoption and use of health IT.

HERNDON, Va. How do you use data and health information infrastructure to enhance the patient-physician relationship? According to Kevin Flanigan, PhD, medical director of MaineCare Services, Maines Medicaid program, if you dont enhance that relationship, whatever infrastructure you impose on a system will not be a permanently integrated component in the decision-making process.

A new report from market researcher Insight Research of Mountain Lakes, N.J., shows healthcare growing faster than any other industry in the U.S. between now and 2017expanding 6.4 percent per yearwith spending on telecommunications and IT outpacing even that, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 9.7 percent over the next five years. If the prediction comes to pass, wireless networking, digital healthcare and related businesses will rise from an already substantial $9.1 billion segment to $14.4 billion.

HERNDON, Va.Two state officials shared their decision-making process to take to the cloud for health information exchange (HIE) efforts during a presentation at the 2012 Healthcare IT Connect Summit on June 20. While still new to the exchange game, the officials shared the circumstances and needs that cloud computing ultimately met.

The Mobile Access to Health Documents profile has been released for public comment, according to Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise International.