Two Erie, Pa.-based community health centers were awarded $500,000 from GE Foundation, the philanthropic organization of General Electric, in an effort to help increase access to quality healthcare across the nation.

The College of American Pathologists (CAP) has hired Charles Wagner as vice president of its STS (SNOMED Terminology Solutions) division. Wagner will lead CAP STS professional services expansion in the health IT marketplace.

The sensitivity and specificity of radio frequency (RF)-embedded sponge technology are much higher than published reports of surgical counts or published findings of intraoperative x-rays for retained sponges, according to a study in the February Journal of American Surgery.

Add this item to the healthcare reform discussion: It could be good for imaging. Expansion of health insurance coverage under programs such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) could reverse falling procedure volume and spending trends. Certainly PPACA faces battles, but if it proceeds as planned (which could be a big if), imaging device sales could see a five-year growth rate of as much as 5 percent, according to a recent report published by the Millennium Research Group.

Biomedical research institution Coriell Institute for Medical Research has partnered with Ohio State University (OSU) Medical Center physicians to incorporate genetic risk information into their patients' EMRs, through their participation in the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC) research study. The goal of the CPMC study is to understand the utility of genome information in patient care and develop best practices for the field.

PeaceHealth, a nonprofit integrated healthcare network with medical centers, critical access hospitals, medical group clinics and laboratories in Alaska, Washington and Oregon, has signed a five-year equipment, quality control, reagent  and service agreement with Sysmex America.

Ascension Urgent Care has partnered with Healthagen to provide medical and facility information on iTriage, a smartphone application for iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and Palm users.

The smartphone juggernaut will impact revenues, design strategies and intellectual property management for medical devices in the same way it has for many consumer products including cameras, GPS devices and personal media players, warned UBM TechInsights, a market research firm, based in Anaheim, Calif.