The path to interoperability of health information has been a long one and will continue to be so, but healthcare organizations, IT vendors and government can take steps now to move forward on that journey, members of two federal advisory committees said this week.

Healthcare organizations are still doing the bare minimum when it comes to digital, between-visit or post-discharge interactions with patients, according to a report from Chilmark Research.

A new fleet of robots gracing the halls of the University of California, San Francisco hospital has inspired mixed feelings in a writer at Wired.  

Inova Health System, Falls Church, Va., will build a high-tech campus, including a cancer center and genomics research laboratory, on a 117-acre campus it is buying from Exxon-Mobil.

The recent announcement that the Department of Health and Human Services would accelerate Medicare’s shift toward value-based payments fits well with the 10-year interoperability roadmap released two weeks ago by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), according to a leader of an ONC advisory panel.

In a newly issued guidance, the FDA said it will not regulate medical device data systems (MDDS), medical image storage devices and medical images communication devices, citing the need for more interoperability with health IT systems.

“We have good evidence that games can be used to improve health," according to Paul Tarini, a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. With this in mind, the foundation is providing seed money for the new Center for Digital Games Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

MT. PROSPECT, Ill.--A new software interface launched today by the Rauland Responder® critical communications solution is the first instance of a nurse call system integrating directly to a hospital patient’s electronic medical record, providing the ability for the systems to share information bi-directionally.