Mike Miliard

Among many other demonstrations and announcements this year at HIMSS17, IBM Watson Health will be "celebrating and highlighting what we've accomplished" since the AI was launched six years ago, said Kyu Rhee, MD, chief health officer at IBM. "And that's quite a bit."

DirectTrust CEO David Kibbe, MD, says the platform is helping connect 'hundreds of different vendors' EHR, PHR and other IT products,' as clinicians are coming up with new and innovative ways to use it.

HIMSS Analytics' most recent Essentials Brief offers a look back at health IT market trends in 2016 – and ahead to the rest of this year and beyond, projecting purchasing demand for 81 different applications in 2017 and 2018.  

Christiana Care CISO Anahi Santiago demands cloud vendors show her ISO or HITRUST certification, a review of SOC II as well as policies and procedures, summaries of penetration and vulnerability assessment and more.

Houston Methodist replaced best-of-breed clinical applications with an integrated EHR. The successful transition involved managing not just technology but, equally as important, employees across multiple teams. Here’s a look at lessons learned. 

HIMSS is recognizing Mercy for its EHR optimization, process improvement efforts, use of evidence-based protocols and analytics gains – all of which have helped the health system improve care quality and patient outcomes, lower costs and increased reimbursements.

The HHS nominee decries a law that has turned physicians "into data entry clerks." Meanwhile, genomics represents a "brave new world," he said – but "the challenges of how we afford to be able to make that available to our society are real."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also plans to modify 2017 requirements for eCQM data reporting, in response to some hospitals' challenges with EHR upgrades and replacements.

NorthShore University HealthSystem gained Stage 7 revalidation from HIMSS Analytics for its hospitals and associated clinics, again attaining the highest level on both the acute care Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model and outpatient EMRAM.

Rhode Island Quality Institute is using its statewide health information exchange to send real-time notifications for care transitions to and from emergency departments and hospitals. The alerts include direct messaging, EHR notifications and real-time dashboards.