Much of the recent advanced visualization news comes from the 2012 annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM). The biggest development by far is the new learning track debuted by SIIM: Quantitative Imaging.

A study of six large integrated healthcare systems has shown a substantial increase in the use of advanced diagnostic imaging since the mid-1990s, not just among the fee-for-service insured populations but even in HMOs, according to research published June 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Insight Imaging, based in Lake Forest, Calif., and Center for Diagnostic Imaging, based in Minneapolis, two of the largest imaging providers in the U.S., are planning to merge. Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed.

End-user acceptance is critical for the success of bar coded medication administration (BCMA) and other technologies, according to an article published June 3 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Among this weeks most-read CMIO news stories was a story about the increase in job postings for healthcare informatics, which are up 36 percent from 2007 to 2011, compared with a 9 percent growth in all healthcare postings and 6 percent increase in all U.S. jobs.

Planning on developing an accountable care organization (ACO)? Not so fast. According to a viewpoint article published June 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, numerous federal and state laws, regulations and public policies could slow down or bar the formation of ACOs.

Communications and IT company Harris has been awarded a two-year, $19 million contract by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology to create a wireless network infrastructure for its medical centers nationwide.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.Oklahoma Heart Hospital, a two-hospital, 60 clinic provider based in Oklahoma City, is not your average hospital. In fact, it touts five-star hotel quality-like customer service, while utilizing mobile devices to augment alerts related to the monitoring of patientswhich may be one of the reasons the facility received the Healthcares Most Wired award in 2011.