CHICAGOMost operational health information exchanges (HIEs), although created independently of one another, demonstrate a number of similar structures and goals, according to responses received by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) HIE Common Practices Survey.

CHICAGOThe American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is a "once in a lifetime event" for providers to grab economic incentives to adopt health IT, but the government still must define vague terms and settle on certification requirements, according to David W. Roberts, vice president of government relations for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

With the Medicare and Medicaid incentives for health IT adoption dangling like a carrot, almost 70 percent of U.S. hospitals are only two steps or less away from having the health IT applications necessary to deliver the likely objectives of meaningful use' for the EMR, according to the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model.

The University Hospital of Bonn in Germany has selected Agfa HealthCare's PACS for an enterprise-wide implementation.

MEDecision, a provider of collaborative healthcare management solutions, has signed a letter of intent to acquire health information exchange (HIE) provider HxTechnologies for an undisclosed amount.

Biomedical informatics researchers at the Mayo Clinic and IBM have launched the Open Health Natural Language Processing (NLP) Consortium, which is establishing the open-source space to promote past and current development efforts, including participation in EMR information extraction.

Amicas has partnered with Healthinc of Sydney, Australia, to bring Amicas PACS, Amicas Reach and Amicas RadStream to the Australian market.

Kaiser Permanente has improved the heart attack survival rate for its members in Colorado through a program that links coronary artery disease patients and teams of pharmacists, nurses, primary care doctors and cardiologists, with an EHR and advanced clinical care registry.