Consumers represent a major untapped workforce in the healthcare system today. Consumers and providers working together in unison could be the unprecedented force we have been looking for to solve the systems quality/cost dilemma.   

Home healthcare can fill care gaps, extend the reach of clinicians, improve clinical outcomes, reduce costs and more. The industry, however, must prove its worth to combat reimbursement challenges and the notion that home health cannot be a solid and consistent partner with other care providers. Health IT that drives care coordination and patient engagement should help build the case for home health.

Boston is the birthplace of the American Revolution as well as a revolution of sorts in applied medical informatics. Thus, we saw it only fitting to make this city where so many famous patient care applications were created, the location for the first AMDIS Fall Symposium. It’s also our first meeting on the East Coast.

As we go to press with this issue, the health IT community is abuzz from the announcement that Farzad Mostashari, MD, PhD, will step down as national coordinator of health IT. He cited this period between rulemaking cycles as a good time for a switch in ONC leadership. 

Healthcare organizations in North America are expected to spend more than $34.5 billion on health IT in 2014 to keep pace with healthcare regulations, according to a recent report, “SourceIT Healthcare Report,” from Technology Business Research.

Florida legislators are pushing for increases in the use of and payment for telemedicine.

Information exchange and data transparency are happening among states in a varieties of steps that will add up to big leaps.

HOUSTON-- Salutopia, a healthcare software innovations company, announced today the launch of a breakthrough technology that gives patients, providers and payers seamless interoperability of patient data across all electronic health record technologies.