Families of Childrens National Medical Centers surgical patients will be able to receive real-time updates on their loved ones conditions via text.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Court overturned a district courts decision regarding a McKesson lawsuit against Epic, reopening the door for patent infringement litigation.

Finally! There were no healthcare data breaches to report on this week. Thats not to say there were no developments on the privacy and security front, however.

The average age of installed MRI scanners in the U.S. has increased from eight years in 2007 to 10.9 years in 2011, according to a market research report by IMV Medical Information Division. The findings suggest a potential impending buying spree as 22 percent of sites plan to purchase new systems in the next three years.

"America's healthcare system has become far too complex and costly to continue business as usual," according to the Institute of Medicine, releasing its 382-page report, Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America.

Big data retrieval is becoming a reality. Using a platform that can collect and standardize de-identified data from multiple healthcare systems various information systems, researchers were able to present a retrospective cohort study of patient characteristics associated with venous thromboembolic events, according to research published July 3 by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Philips Healthcare's TraceMasterVue and IntelliSpace electrocardiograms are now compatible with the mVisum STEMI Alert smartphone application.

Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion and multiple daily injections have similar effects on glycemic control and hypoglycemia, according to a systematic review of comparative effectiveness research, but there are important weaknesses in the available literature.