A new challenge launched by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is seeking out best health IT practices to reduce high blood pressure.

The Dorenfest Institute for Health Information, managed by the HIMSS Foundation, has made available its 2012 year-end HIMSS Analytics Database.

Four-fifths of people would like the option to use their smartphones to interact with healthcare providers including government and private insurers, hospitals, pharmacies, mail-order drug companies, third party administrators and clinics, according to a global survey conducted by FICO, a predictive analytics and decision management software company.

More telehealth services could soon become available to Medicare beneficiaries.

The American Telemedicine Association shared thoughts on how the National Association of Insurance Commissioners States could improve efforts related to the 1996 Managed Care Plan Network Adequacy Model Act.

HUDSON, Ohio--Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced today that the partnership between its drug information solution, Lexicomp®, and digital medical image library, Logical Images®, is continuing to grow, with Lexicomp now offering subscriptions to Logical Images’ flagship solution VisualDx®. Designed to assist in the diagnosis of diseases that prevent visually, VisualDx can help individual Lexicomp users enhance patient care and promote shared decision making to strengthen the patient-physician relationship.

The Meaningful Use attestation hardship exemption deadline passed on July 1 without any moves by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to extend the date for when eligible providers can file for an exemption, despite the pleas of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

Despite the efforts toward interoperabiity, the current architecture for data exchange required by Meaningful Use Stage 2 does not allow for "robust" patient data sharing, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Informatics Association.