From innovation officers and centers to innovation grants and awards, innovation certainly seems to be front and center in the healthcare industry.

Far-sighted facilities and healthcare systems are learning how to harness technology to buttress their fiscal health. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is taking that concept to an entrepreneurial level, partnering with industry to develop cost-saving, care-enhancing technologies and commercializing those technologies for profit.

Providers must constantly assess and advance their IT infrastructure to support new medical technologies, treatments and healthcare reform efforts. This “behind-the-scenes” nature of the beast poses its own challenges, beyond the ever-present concerns about costs.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) should be one of your technology partners because they offer a range of services from access to basic telecommunications bandwidth to full, value-added healthcare services.

The pressure on healthcare organizations to improve care quality and patient outcomes, and reduce costs while also meeting Meaningful Use measures and other mandated IT efforts is driving big changes within organizations.

Despite calls for e-prescribing to address preventable medication errors, adoption remained flat through the early 2000s. Rates skyrocketed, however, from 7 percent of physicians in December 2008 to 48 percent in June 2012, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). While all states experienced rapidly increasing e-prescribing activity, three stand out.

Franciscan Alliance and Cigna have launched an accountable care initiative aimed at improving the quality of care for Cigna customers in the Indianapolis area.

Aetna, Memorial Hermann Health System and the MHMD Memorial Hermann Physician Network have formed an accountable care collaboration, which is anticipated to be available on April 1 in Harris, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties in Texas.