Mike Miliard

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Monday announced the release of its Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, 2015-2020, updating the goals of an initiative most recently published in 2011, when the U.S. healthcare landscape looked much different than it does today.

This is the third annual "Benchmarks" columns to focus on imaging technology. Each one has been timed for November, to coincide with the mammoth RSNA Annual Meeting – it celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 5 at McCormick Place in Chicago – and each one has had more or less the same theme: the market is pretty much saturated when it comes to RIS and PACS systems, but change is on the way.

Health Level Seven International has launched the Argonaut Project -- a collaborative comprising healthcare heavy-hitters such as Epic, Cerner, MEDITECH, Mayo Clinic, Intermountain, Beth Israel Deaconess and Partners HealthCare -- to speed the development and adoption of HL7’s standards framework, FHIR.

While Stage 2 is proving challenging, at least to date, Stage 3 "is unlikely to push the envelope too far," said AMIA CEO Doug Fridsma, MD.

"I'd like to see a world where you get paid because you have good informaticians," said Doug Fridsma, MD, former chief scientist at ONC and now CEO of AMIA, speaking Wednesday at RSNA's 100th annual meeting in Chicago.

While workflow engines are common in other industries, healthcare has so far made limited use of them. At RSNA 2014 on Tuesday, one Mayo Clinic radiologist made the case for these efficiency tools, and showed how a changing medical landscape may soon see them finding favor -- in radiology departments and beyond.

In 2015, hospitals will -- and should -- make more advanced use of "third platform" technologies based on mobile tools, social channels, data analytics and the cloud, according to a recent report from IDC Health Insights.

Offering a bit of leeway, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has pushed out the deadline for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals to attest to meaningful use for the 2014 reporting year, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 31.

As debate swirls about a recent Institute of Medicine report suggesting that electronic health records collect more non-clinical patient data for population health research, a new poll suggest patients are mostly willing to offer access to anonymized health information -- but only to an extent.

CommonWell Health Alliance is marching toward "a new phase" of its vendor-driven interoperability efforts, extending its availability to providers, signing on new corporate members and eyeing new opportunities for nationwide expansion.