The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) could receive $3.31 billion to spend on IT in 2010, an increase of 30 percent over the agency's 2009 budget, under a bill approved Monday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Medication safety information systems developer Meta has released MetaCare CPOE, a clinical provider order entry system.

A team of researchers has invented a process for filling fullerenes with radioactive material, which holds great promise for delivering targeted radiation therapy.

Physicians may be able to differentially diagnose three common neurodegenerative disorders via MRI in the near future, according to a study presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD) on July 11 in Vienna.

The Social Security Administration is seeking to expand the number of healthcare providers with which it electronically exchanges medical information in order to improve the speed and accuracy of its disability determinations. Connection software is free and downloadable.

The Access to Medical Imaging Coalition (AMIC) has released a statement of "concern" over the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) recent recommendations to President Barack Obama and Congress to reduce Medicare reimbursement rates for medical imaging and radiation therapies through an increase of 90 percent in assumed utilization rates for outpatient imaging and radiation facilities.

About 45,000 office-based physicians--including nearly all physicians who practice at federally qualified health centers and half of office-based pediatricians--may be eligible for up to $63,750 to improve and maintain their health IT systems because of their participation in Medicaid, according to an analysis by researchers at the George Washington University.

For young children presenting to the emergency department (ED) with headache but normal neurologic exam findings and a non-worrying history, CT scans seldom lead to diagnosis or contribute to immediate management, according to a single-center study in the July issue of Pediatrics.