Identifying a patient normally means going by their Social Security number—but what if that patient is a newborn who doesn’t have one yet? The Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) laid out its suggested solution at a presentation at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) conference in Los Angeles.

Lori Wallace, after living nearly a year past the median survival rate for women with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, knows she’s on borrowed time. Accepting such a reality, the mother of an 11-year-old boy is irked by the “excessive positivity” in healthcare marketing.

Purdue Pharma and Geisinger have announced a partnership to study the effects of the Apple Watch on chronic pain.

A common fact mentioned alongside the U.S. opioid crisis is the astronomical number of prescriptions per county or per state. Cigna, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., will no longer cover many OxyContin prescriptions in 2018—a clear effort to control the misuse and abuse of opioids.

Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Harvard Medical School and MIT have developed a "smart" bandage the could heal wound three times faster than conventional bandages. The bandage, which is activated by a wireless device, is explained in Advanced Functional Materials.

Scientists from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have developed a "body-on-a-chip," composed of micro-organs, for improved testing of new drugs. The micro-organ system is described in Scientific Reports.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have become an integral part of high-quality care, yet organizations struggle with the sharing of patient data across systems. A brief from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology examines key measures in EHR integration and interoperability from skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in 2016.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has detailed some plans for a startup known as Cityblock, focusing on new care delivery methods in lower-income areas.