More organizations are turning to web hosting and concierge health IT service providers to meet their growing needs and keep up with the competition. Beyond the dollars-and-cents aspect of hosted IT is another practical consideration: less fighting with in-house systems allows clinicians more time to focus on patient care.

MEDecision announced at HIMSS11 in Orlando, Fla., that it is launching a mobile application to enable physicians and other clinical users to access MEDecision Clinical Summaries through smartphones, electronic tablets and similar portable devices.

Voice recognition has been used in medicine for more than 30 years, but recent advances in the technologys accuracy have been key in cutting hospitals costs and saving physicians time, according to a study by Arun Krishnaraj, MD, and colleagues in the July 2010 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

With HIMSS 2011 and Orlando a distant warm memory now, one of the things that sticks with me is a question-and-answer session following a Physician IT Symposium panel discussion. The session had the deceptively simple title: Tackling the Meaningful Use Requirements. Panelists and audience members alike had questions, a few answers and a lot of insight into the challenges behind that title. Here are some highlights:

Motion Computing announced at the 2011 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference and exhibition in Orlando, Fla., that the Motion C5v Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) is now available with the Intel Core i3 processor.

First-time and replacement ambulatory EMR sales rose again last year, and although there are options than ever, healthcare providers are leaning toward tested titans, according to a new report from KLAS.

Varolii has released two products to help healthcare organizations reach and engage patients in their healthcare.

This is the fourth installment in CMIO's exclusive web series exploring the birth of Rhode Islands statewide health information exchange (HIE), featuring the leading stakeholders and clinical perspectives on its development.