McKesson Technology Solutions has merged with Change Healthcare, retaining the latter’s name for a new IT company aimed at helping payers, providers and customers “as they strive to achieve the best healthcare outcomes as efficiently as possible in this new environment.” 

The creation of a new data and analytics company, combining McKesson’s technology solutions unit with Nashville, Tenn.-based Change Healthcare, has been completed. The merger unites “the majority” of McKesson Technology Solutions with substantially all of Change, with the new company retaining the Change Healthcare name and Neil de Crescenzo as CEO.

The vast majority of the top nonprofit patient advocacy groups accepted donations from manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Connected health using technologies has improved care delivery across the healthcare continuum. In a presentation at HIMSS 2017 in Orlando, Jeroen Tas, chief innovation and strategy officer at Royal Philips, examined the role of technology and barriers organizations may face in implementing connected health technology.

Improving communication between patients and physicians is easier said than done. A recent study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality outlined how a hospital-wide communication training program was able to improve patients' perceptions by 9 percent.

Having productive conversations is the baseline in providing high quality care to patients, but can communication reach such a level through an app or website? Researchers conducted a study, published in Human Communication Research, testing the effectiveness of online health tools when using different tones. 

A new study called the NCI-MATCH trial that analyzes patients’ tumors to determine whether they contain gene abnormalities for which a targeted drug exists and assigns treatment based on the abnormality has gained popularity since its open enrollment in August 2015.

J. Patrick Bewley, CEO of Big Cloud Analytics, and Moulay Elalamy, VP of information technology at Benchmark Senior Living, presented a study at HIMSS 2017 in Orlando on the effects of wearable technology on seniors living in a community center.