The sad reality is that after youre through designing, implementing and refining an EMR, youre just beginning to get to the point of data integration. Yet the idea of being able to integrate data from different cases and learn something is one of the key premises of meaningful use Stage 1 and Stage 2.

Imprivata announced a host of new products and industry partnerships at HIMSS11 in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 21-24. Designed to accelerate the adoption of EMR applications and help healthcare providers achieve meaningful use, the new products and partnerships focus on three key areas: virtualization, mobility and clinician workflow.

They say good things come in small packages. In the case of handheld ultrasound, which seems to be shrinking annually, the small package could diffuse ultrasound across the enterprise and across the globe.

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has agreed to pay the U.S. government $1 million to settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This is the second financial penalty issued by HHS for a covered entitys violations of HIPAA, as a $4.3 million fine was announced earlier this week.

In the past 50 years, ultrasound devices have shrunk as dramatically as their applications have swelled: point-of-care ultrasound is now a safe and effective modality for procedure guidance, diagnosis and screening, but the technique is a user-dependent technology demanding competence, argued the authors of a report published Feb. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

ORLANDO, Fla.At HIMSS 2010, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) launched the Direct Project with a Powerpoint presentation and a concept: to enable every provider in the country to have access to universal addressing and transport capabilities that will let them push information to other providers, regardless of network, health information exchange or EHR, says Arien Malec, coordinator of the Direct Project and coordinator of the Standards and Interoperability Framework at ONC.

State health IT coordinators should adopt best practice models with common themes across states--including patient identification, provider directories, consent management, and privacy provisions and data standards, according to recent recommendations developed by College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) StateNet.

GE Healthcare highlighted its portfolio of health IT software and systems geared to help providers achieve meaningful use (MU), while elucidating the challenges that radiologists face in meeting MU criteria during HIMSS11 in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 20 to Feb. 24. The company shared that GE Centricity Enterprise version 6.9 was certified as a Complete EHR and highlighted Centricity Practice Solution 10, Centricity Patient Online and eHealth Community Desktop.