Jack Beaudoin

A bipartisan think tank is calling on Congress to let the Food and Drug Administration use EHRs and crowd-sourced patient experience data to help transform the drug and medical device approval process.

For at least the last decade, the health IT field has seen a scholarly back-and-forth on the effectiveness of electronic medical records. As soon as one study is published that finds technology has little impact on patient outcomes, another emerges that seems to show just the opposite. But, today, more accurate information is emerging.

Some analysts are predicting the next "great wave" in EHR purchasing among U.S. hospitals to be just around the corner. But do the numbers really bear that out?

Federal, state and local governments have long used tax deductions and credits as policy tools to direct individual and organizational behavior. We take it for granted that incentives work -- the debates on government incentives tend to cluster around their ethical use or the economics involved.

This February, I'll be attending my eighth HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition. Back in 2004, the industry was fairly new to me, although I had written about both healthcare and information technology for other publications. But it was a thrilling time to begin a new career, not least because, as one headline in the HIMSS Show Daily put it, "Suddenly, EHR is the talk of D.C."

There are two ways of looking at upcoming compliance deadlines for HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10, Healthcare IT News reported in March.

Healthcare IT leaders from the United States and Europe say they're confident they stand on the brink of a new era of eHealth cooperation. But if the areas they identified at a panel on EU-US cooperation represents the "low-hanging fruit," no one should expect immediate results.

Facing a sometimes impatient and skeptical audience of clinicians and healthcare IT vendors, European Commission officials say the latest eHealth plans will include concrete proposals to deploy information technology throughout European health systems.

European Union ministers have unveiled a common vision and policy priorities to ensure that all countries in the region take advantage of information technology to improve healthcare.

There are two ways of looking at upcoming compliance deadlines for HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10.