Nuance Communications has released Dragon Medical Practice Edition, which seeks to help clinicians and healthcare organizations to create medical notes into any EHR.

Advanced MRI techniques can be used to detect subtle changes in joint cartilage microstructureand provide physicians a diagnostic tool for finding key markers of early osteoarthritis (OA), according to a review published in the July issue of Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Although natural language processing (NLP) research in the clinical setting has occurred since the 1960s, progress in developing NLP applications for clinical text has been slow and lags behind progress made in the general NLP domain, according to an editorial in the September issue of Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Methodist Hospital Research Institute (MHRI) in Houston is partnering with Philips Healthcare to build a multi-modality suite capable of imaging highly infectious patients in a contained, quarantine-like environment.

Experts are starting to formulate how accountable care organizations (ACOs) could take shape in various risk- and payment-sharing models, but the general consensus is that there is not enough interoperability between provider partners and internal systems to be successfuljust yet. However, there seem to be steps in the right direction.

Pericardial fat measured by MRI correlated more strongly with plaque eccentricity than body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference, according to a study published online Aug. 16 in Radiology. The relationship between pericardial fat and overall plaque burden was stronger for men than women in the study.

Hospitals working to enhance patient care, while improving their bottom lines are finding medication inventory management to be an important part of the process. A report by healthcare research firm KLAS, addressed the question of what role pharmacy automation plays in managing medication inventories and which vendors' automation systems are helping.

Anthem Blue Cross and Individual Practice Association Medical Group of Santa Clara County (SCCIPA) are launching an accountable care organization (ACO), the first of its kind in northern California to provide medical care to Anthem preferred provider organization (PPO) members.