ZyDoc, a New York-based medical informatics company, reported results from its Phase I SBIR research study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, with additional funding by NYSTAR, regarding alternative EHR data entry with dictation. James M. Maisel, M.D., Chairman of ZyDoc served as the Principal Investigator for the project, entitled “Applying NLP to Free Text as an EHR Data Capture Method to Improve EHR Usability.” The approved scientific study awarded to ZyDoc was performed with Columbia University physicians and compared the documentation quality, efficiency, and user satisfaction of conventional data entry in their Allscripts EHR to an alternative method allowing physicians to dictate representative admitting documents for three specialties. The alternative method (“NLP entry”) generated transcribed documents from dictations that were processed using natural language processing (NLP) to extract standard structured ICD-9, ICD-10, SNOMED®, RxNorm and LOINC® terms that are the basis of the next generation of EHR systems being implemented in October 2014.

Starting next month, health industry consortium HITRUST and the Department of Health & Human Services will conduct monthly cyber threat briefings to help organizations better understand current and probable cyber threats and share best practices for cyber threat defense and response.

Once again, Meaningful Use is the big news this week. This time, the news is that the federal Health IT Policy Committee voted to approve the Meaningful Use Work Group’s Stage 3 recommendations.

Health information exchange usage directly correlated to significant cost savings and a 30 percent reduction in readmissions through the emergency department, according to a study published in Applied Clinical Informatics.

Meaningful Use has been top of mind for most in healthcare with Stage 2 requirements presenting numerous hurdles for eligible hospitals and professionals.

While the number of data breaches decreased slightly during the past year, healthcare organizations have improved their ability to control data breach costs, according to the Ponemon Institute's “Fourth Annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy & Data Security,” which was funded by ID Experts.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC’s) Workforce Development Program trained thousands of students and helped bolster their employment prospects, according an evaluation of the program presented at the Health IT Policy Committee meeting on March 11.

After much debate during the March 11 Health IT Policy Committee meeting, members of the federal advisory committee voted to approve the Meaningful Use Work Group’s Stage 3 recommendations.