Nearly half of pharmaceutical manufacturers are actively using social media to engage with patients, according to a report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute awarded $6.9 million to Louisiana Public Health Institute, Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Tulane University to develop the Louisiana Clinical Data Research Network.

Telestroke—or utilizing telemedicine to deliver stroke care—is an effective means to delivering quality emergency stroke care to remote hospitals and improving patient outcomes, according to a Mayo Clinic study appearing in the American Journal of Managed Care. Telestroke also appears cost-effective for society, the research found.

Telehealth services will jump significantly in the next few years, with the number of patients worldwide using the services estimated to rise from fewer than 350,000 in 2013 to about 7 million in 2018, according to a report published by IHS Technology.

If this week is any indication, health IT safety is going to be a primary focus in 2014.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office for the National Coordinator for Health IT announced that McKesson and Meditech are the first two official “test EHRs,” selected from among certified EHRs.

Clinical decision support reference products still are not integrated enough to deliver the strategic direction providers are looking for, according to a new report from KLAS Research, Clinical Decision Support 2013: Sizing Up Point-of-Care Reference Tools.   

Almost three-quarters (74 percent) of Americans are extremely concerned or very concerned about healthcare, just slightly behind the 79 percent concerned about the economy and ahead of the 67 percent about joblessness, according to a survey.