Accredited hospitals in the U.S. are providing higher quality evidence-based care for heart attack, pneumonia, surgical care and childrens asthma care, according to Improving Americas Hospitals: The Joint Commissions Report on Quality and Safety 2010. The report presents scientific evidence of improvement and how it relates to these common medical conditions and procedures.

Researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) have developed HyperSentry, software that enhances security for cloud-computing systems used in healthcare and elsewhere. HyperSentry is adept at detecting viruses or other malware in the "hypervisors" that are critical to cloud computing, and does so without alerting the malware that it is being examined, according to NCSU.

Medical software company Medipattern has received a U.S. patent for its "system and method of computer-aided detection (CAD) technology, which is embedded in its software line, the Cadenza Platform.

Some MRI sequences may provide a less invasive, safer and sufficiently accurate alternative to angiogram and CT for assessing great vessel stents, according to a study in the October issue of American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR). The study also cautioned against the more standard black-blood MRI technique, which performed poorly in assessing great vessel stenosis in stents.

Healthcare IT provider Carestream Health has released its latest wireless DR detector, the cesium iodide Carestream DRX-1C detector.

Pharos Innovations has partnered with South Jersey Healthcare (SJH), a regional healthcare provider in southern New Jersey that serves a rural population, to expand SJH's post-discharge care management program to include the monitoring and management of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

A study released by Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) reaffirms the safety record of FDAs premarket review process for low- and moderate-risk devices, known as the 510(k) process. The study, conducted by the research firm Battelle Memorial Institute for AdvaMed, demonstrates that of the nearly 47,000 medical devices cleared by FDA through the 510(k) process since 1998, only 0.16 percent were involved in a serious recall event.

The FDA has approved an expanded indication for three of Boston Scientific's cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-Ds). Along with their use in patients with Class III and IV heart failure, the devices can now be used in high-risk patients with Class I and II heart failure with left bundle branch block.