Intermountain Healthcare, Ascension Health, SSM Health and Trinity Health announced they’ll create their own not-for-profit generic drug company, called Project RX, with the goal of increasing pharmaceutical competition and making “essential generic medications more available and more affordable.”

Telemonitoring can help manage patients with heart failure, but evaluating its true impact can be difficult. In response, researchers examined previous studies to establish criteria, which were divided into six classes: dimensions: clinical, economic, user perspective, educational, organizational, and technical. Findings were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Prior authorization is often listed as one of the biggest hassles for many healthcare facilities, with plenty of calls for collaboration between major associations to streamline the onerous process. Those efforts have now led to a consensus statement from six groups on their shared goals for preapproving patients’ medical treatments.

This year’s flu season has been considered one of the more severe strains and Kinsa is hoping to heal individuals faster with its mobile “smart thermometer.”

A psychoeducational tool identifies patients at risk for an opioid overdose but fails to motivate them to change their behavior. Findings are published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the University Hospital Bonn and the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have developed a computer-aided artificial intelligence platform for image analysis of patient faces to improve diagnosis of rare diseases. Findings were published in Genome Medicine.

Older diabetic patients are living longer as they and their physicians get better at managing the condition, but with longer lifespans comes additional years of incurring higher healthcare expenditures than non-diabetics.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) have chosen Randy McCleese, MSIS, MBA, former CHIME board chair and chief information officer at Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Ky., as the recipient of the 2017 John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year award.