Simple, secure, scalable, standards-based, point-to-point messaging via the internet. Common definitions of identity. Its getting closer. Arien Malec, coordinator of the Direct Projectformerly known as NHIN Directoffered an update on its progress during a National eHealth Collaborative webinar earlier this week. And progress has been made, he said, announcing the 1.0 release of the Direct reference implementation and the start of real-world testing.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of Healthcare Quality, and the Critical Care Societies Collaborative (CCSC) have announced a new national program that recognizes teams of critical care professionals, hospital units and healthcare institutions that reduce or eliminate healthcare-associated infections (HAI).

The percentage of the U.S. patient population with multiple, complicated and chronic medical conditions is expected to rise, at the same time many healthcare practitioners are reaching retirement age. New ways of managing chronic conditions are at the heart of both quality improvement and cost containment efforts nationwide.

Norton Healthcare has partnered with Microsoft to use the companys Amalga Unified Intelligence System and HealthVault systems to aggregate and mine data. The partnership will allow Norton to facilitate an accountable care organization (ACO) initiative in Kentucky and Indiana.

IBM and American Well have expanded a partnership to secure patient information that is collected and exchanged as part of American Wells Online Care consultations with healthcare providers.

At RSNA in Chicago, GE Healthcare today unveiled eHealth Image Exchange software, a standards-based platform for sharing images and integrating workflows.

The U.S. spent more than $6,284 per capita on healthcare in 2007, compared with an average of $2,968 per capita in G-5 countries: Canada, Japan, Germany, the U.K. and France, according to a report from Business Roundtable, an association of U.S. CEOs whose companies provide healthcare.

DICOM Grid, a provider of a cloud-based platform for medical imaging management, has made available DICOM Grid ImageCare, a cloud computing platform to assist searching, sharing and exchanging medical images using consumer web applications such as Google, Facebook and iTunes.