The Healthcare Leadership Forum in Chicago brought together several thought leaders for insightful discussions on decision support, standards, patient safety and more.

With Medicare tracking and penalizing low HCAHPS scores, which measure patients’ hospital experience, more hospitals are creating roles and departments responsible for ensuring a positive experience for patients.

There is much room for improvement in the field of data analytics, says Peter Aiken, PhD, associate professor of information systems at Virginia Commonwealth University and founder of Data Blueprint. 

The mHealth Alliance, an organization dedicated to advancing the use of mobile technologies to improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, announced this evening the winners of the Holly Ladd mHealth Pioneer Award and the mHealth Alliance Collaboration Award. This marks the first time that the Alliance has extended these honors. Dr. Richard Gakuba of Rwanda received the Holly Ladd mHealth Pioneer Award, while the Ananya partnership of Bihar, India, received the mHealth Alliance Collaboration Award. The awards were presented at a dinner celebrating the Alliance’s fifth anniversary, which coincides with the fifth annual mHealth Summit, of which the Alliance is an organizing partner.

University of Missouri researchers announced the launch of a national study to examine relationships between IT systems and specific components of nursing home care, including resident care, clinical support and administrative activities.

Last month, a bill was introduced to expand Meaningful Use incentives to mental health providers. This month, a survey provides indications of how well another subset of providers is doing with interoperability.

Once regarded as infeasible, patient access to physician notes is increasingly becoming the norm, according to an op-ed published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The shortage of physicians in rural and remote areas, coupled with continuous development of telecommunications, is positioning the telemedicine market for sharp growth during the next five years, according to a report from research firm Research and Markets.