Orlando, FL-- HIMSS Booth 4008 -- The Garage, a health information technology (IT) company re-imagining and building breakthrough innovations for hospitals and healthcare systems, today announced it will showcase AiR, one of the world’s first hands-free, fully integrated and interactive platforms designed to prevent surgical errors, at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2014 Annual Conference and Exhibition from February 23-27, 2014 in Orlando, FL.

Five hospital systems that together represent 24 Michigan hospitals have joined or expanded their participation in Detroit-based Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s value-based hospital reimbursement model. Similar to the accountable care organization (ACO) idea of lowering costs while improving quality through better care coordination and a focus on outcomes, the new model requires the hospitals to “identify their provider partners in the community and work with them to develop and implement an infrastructure plan that includes an all-patient registry system that allows caregivers at the hospital and in the physician offices to measure an individual’s health performance against similar populations.”

The Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has issued two special emphasis notices of funding opportunities for researchers interested in studying the safe use of EHRs and health IT.

It’s where NASA technology meets mobile health innovation. Calif.-based mobile health developer Vantage Health is joining forces with Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI), a National Institutes of Health-sponsored consortium led by Scripps Health and the Scripps Research Institute, for the advancement of mobile health technology using cutting-edge space technology.

Ninety million wearable computing devices will be shipped this year, according to ABI Research, thanks to the growth of sports, fitness and health applications.

Interoperability was a big topic at the recent Health Care Innovation Day, an event jointly hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and West Health Institute.

The National Institutes of Health's Fogarty International Center has launched a program that aims to further development of mobile technology and research into how it can be used to improve health, especially in low-resource countries.

Several of the largest U.S. retail pharmacy chains and associations are pledging to support the Blue Button initiative to help patients access their prescription information, according to a post published on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy blog.