If healthcare is to rise to the challenge of providing better care while holding the line on costs, stakeholders across the entire industry must collaborate around digesting data and serving patients.

Flagler Hospital, a 335-bed community hospital based in St. Augustine, Florida, is projected to save more than $20 million after AI technology helped it reduce costs, average length of stay and readmissions for pneumonia patients. 

Medical device company Sight Diagnostics has raised $27.8 million in funding to expand its system that uses AI to analyze blood tests, according to a report by VentureBeat.

It will take close collaboration between governmental bodies and private businesses to achieve interoperability across U.S. healthcare. There’s no big news in that. However, a high-powered panel fleshed out the details on the necessity Feb. 14 at HIMSS19 in Orlando.

IBM Watson Health is partnering with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to use AI and genomics to help clinicians better predict the onset of serious cardiovascular diseases, the company announced Feb. 13.

Researchers at West Virginia University (WVU) were awarded a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Justice to develop novel AI techniques to combat the opioid epidemic and opioid trafficking. The funding will be provided over a three-year period.

HHS is pushing new interoperability rules to encourage better care coordination and empower patients to become stronger partners in their care through access to their digital health records––and the industry seems to be on board.

What to do with wearables and the deluge of data they offer is a big question in the minds of IT leaders and a topic addressed well at HIMSS19 by Karl Poterack, MD, the medical director, applied clinical informatics, Mayo Clinic.