The federal healthcare reform bill that requires Americans to purchase healthcare insurance was deemed unconstitutional by a second federal judge this week.

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT is accelerating progress with new funding for three existing programs, wrote David Blumenthal, MD, the National Coordinator for Health IT in a recent letter on the ONC website.

A new tax on device manufacturers that is included in healthcare reform might be one of many factors driving the outsourcing of medical devices, according to a new report by Kalorama Information.

HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) has serious reservations about the Presidents Advisory Council on Science and Technology (PCAST)s assertion that the central element of universal exchange language for healthcare information must be meta-tagged individual data elements and calls its assessment of EHR capabilities hopelessly out of date.

CMIO.net presents a weekly update of the EHR products certified by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies (ONC-ATCBs). The following EHR certifications were announced recently:

Radiology departments are planning more purchases this year, an increase of 10 percent from last year, according to a new market research report from KLAS.

The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Exchange isnt a futuristic proof of concept, like a model hydrogen-powered hovercraft at a high school science fair. This was the message of a National eHealth Collaborative webinar, Revisiting the NHIN Value Proposition, earlier this week that featured speakers from Kaiser Permanente, MedVirginia and the Social Security Administration.

Lahey Clinic depends on keeping its referring physicians satisfied. Implementing a health information exchange (HIE)by way of a physician web portalis one way it has been able to do so, said Peter K. Dempsey, MD, CMIO and vice chair of the department of neurosurgery at the  500-physician multispecialty group practicein Burlington, Mass., during a recent interview with CMIO.