Kaiser Permanente is betting on mobile health and telehealth to reduce unnecessary and costly visits to urgent care centers and hospitals.

Nowhere more than in health care are the stakes higher for quality. That said, neither is there a magic bullet that will make health-care providers more effective, according to Kelly Court, the chief quality officer for the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA).

Skaneateles Falls, NY, USA, February 17, 2014 -- Welch Allyn, a leading medical diagnostic device company that delivers pragmatic innovation at the point of care, today announced it has partnered with seca , global leader in medical measuring and weighing systems, to enable wireless automated interface between the Welch Allyn Connex® Vital Signs Monitor (VSM) and seca scales and measuring devices with the seca 360° system. The partnership allows Welch Allyn to offer for the first time a wirelessly connected weight and height patient data solution for both physician and hospital customers in low-acuity settings.

Orlando, FL-- HIMSS Booth 4008 -- The Garage, a health information technology (IT) company re-imagining and building breakthrough innovations for hospitals and healthcare systems, today announced it will showcase AiR, one of the world’s first hands-free, fully integrated and interactive platforms designed to prevent surgical errors, at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2014 Annual Conference and Exhibition from February 23-27, 2014 in Orlando, FL.

HomeTown Health, in partnership with the National School of Applied Telehealth, has partnered with The New College Institute (NCI) and the University of Virginia (UVA) Center for Telehealth to launch the first telehealth certification program in the state of Virginia.

Surgical errors occur more than 4,000 times a year in the U.S. 1; at least 39 and 20 times per week, respectively, surgeons leave foreign objects, such towels and sponges, inside their patients, perform the wrong surgery, or operate on the wrong body part.2 A game-changing data interaction tool debuting at HIMSS14 gives healthcare providers a new solution to address these challenges.

BOSTON, Feb. 5, 2014 -- Massachusetts-based telehealth leader American Well has found that consumers vastly prefer the face-to-face interaction of video visits to telephone-only consults. In fact, consumers chose video for their visit 94 percent of the time. Of those using video, 60 percent did so using a mobile device, with telephone and secure messaging playing a role only when Internet access was limited. Doctors who treat patients via American Well report that they also prefer video consults over phone-only – mainly because it helps them better diagnose patients.

Basketball great Shaquille O'Neal has been working with technology company Qualcomm to learn how mobile health can improve care and cut costs.