Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have established a strategic affiliation to foster joint research and educational programs that improve healthcare delivery.

On day two of three scheduled days of hearings regarding health IT, specifically the growth of medical apps and whether they warrant FDA oversight, the House Committee on Energy & Commerce debated innovation, device tax and more.

Sales for advanced remote patient monitoring jumped nearly 20 percent from $8.9 billion in 2011 to $10.6 billion in 2012, according to market research publisher Kalorama Information in its report, Advanced Patient Monitoring Systems.  This market includes wireless and remote patient monitors, applications and equipment for processing data, and applications and equipment for transferring patient monitoring data into an EHR.

U.S. hospitals could save 950,000 lives and approximately $93 billion over five years by replicating practices achieved by a national performance improvement collaborative, according to findings based on hospital results from members of the Premier healthcare alliance QUEST collaborative.

The resounding message at the first of three scheduled U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce hearings on health IT is that FDA must act soon to finalize a 2011 guidance document on its oversight of mobile medical apps to eliminate the cloud of uncertainty on the matter. 

It should come as little surprise that interoperability was a major focus of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) 2013 annual convention. Advances in so many other initiatives—Meaningful Use, information exchange, patient engagement and more—depend on interoperability.

There are lots of different definitions for patient engagement, said Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. That disparity was the impetus for an article published in the February issue of Health Affairs, which reviews numerous studies on patient activation and how healthcare organizations can better utilize patients to improve outcomes and lower costs.

Medical groups reported an average turnover rate of 6.8 percent in 2012, according to the 8th annual Physician Retention Survey from Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association (AMGA). The 2012 physician turnover rate rose from 6.5 percent in 2011, which was significantly higher than the lowest rate of 5.9 percent reported in 2009 at the depth of the recession, according to researchers, and exceeded 6.4 percent reported in 2005, the first year data were collected.