I have a new variation on the invocation about living in interesting times: May you attend a meeting of CMIOs shortly after the final rule for meaningful use comes out. Many years ago, Ojai, Calif., was the fictional hometown of TVs Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man. Thirty-something years after that show aired, bionic is part of the American lexicon, and in Ojai, AMDIS Physician-Computer Symposium Conference attendees were already performing the very real, yet, in some ways superhuman feat of figuring out the ramifications of the final rule for meaningful use.

Health IT company TriZetto has appointed Trace Devanny as its new CEO and member of the board of directors, effective July 19.

OJAI, Calif. CPOE implementation in any facility is challenging, but CMIOs from two pediatric hospitals said unintended consequences can be anticipated and mitigated or avoided altogether. At the AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium yesterday, James Levin, MD, PhD, CMIO of Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh of the UPMC, and Christopher Longhurst, MD, CMIO of Lucile Packard Hospital in Stanford, Calif., talked about implementation and its results at their facilities.

PACSGear, a distributor of imaging connectivity for EHRs, has signed the Fundao Instituto de Pesquisa e Estudo de Diagnstico por Imagem in So Paulo, Brazil, as its first site in Latin America.

The Advancing Patient Safety Coalition has urged FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, to issue a proposed rule to establish a unique device identification (UDI) system for medical devices in a letter last week.

Intrinsic Imaging, a bio/pharmaceutical medical imaging services developer, has entered a technology agreement with health IT provider Merge Healthcare, in which Intrinsic will implement Merges new Clinical Imaging Management System (CIMS).

The Georgia Health IT Regional Extension Center has selected the Coalition of Athens Area Physicians to become a local extension center to assist physicians and nurse practitioners in the adoption of EHRs in northeastern Georgia.

HP has introduced HP EHReady, which supports the adoption of EHRs among hospitals and physicians by offering to physicians the ability to stay connected through an integrated EHR patient network.