The University of North Carolina (UNC) Health Care System in Chapel Hill, N.C., has appointed Donald C. Spencer, MD, MBA, to the role of chief medical informatics officer (CMIO).

The bad news: Almost three-quarters of Americans worry about medical mistakes. The good news: Some 68 percent trust technology to allay their fears.

Radiology, like all of healthcare, is changing in the face of reform, and one noticeable shift is the growing emphasis on evidence-based medicine. As U.S. organizations look to turn best practices into evidence-based policy for their regionsand committees like the Independent Payment Advisory Board aim to make a similar impact nationallythose working in medical imaging can look toward efforts like the Washington State Health Technology Assessment Program as a preview of whats to come.

A look at decision support outside of healthcare offers new insights that are generalizable to healthcare provider decisions, according to research published by Medical Informatics and Decision Making on August 17.

Sentara Healthcare and MDLIVE has entered a partnership that will allow the integrated healthcare system to expand healthcare access by offering patients telehealth consults with the health IT vendors communications platform.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, has experienced its second data breach this year, this time as a result of a wayward USB thumb drive.

There is ongoing debate over the money-saving potential of EHRs, with some research showing their ability to reduce provider costs and some showing their ability to bust provider budgets. The lack of consistency suggests past research has inappropriately framed the debate, according to an August working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

More than half of U.S. hospitals, 54 percent, plan to purchase products designed to help integrate medical devices with EMRs over the next two years.