Mike Miliard

Video content analysis, by which recorded media is scoured automatically to detect and track specific pieces of information – motion detection, say, or facial recognition – is still a very new technology. But it's already finding footholds everywhere from CCTV security cameras to big Hollywood studios.

When Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national coordinator for health IT, thinks about health information exchange (HIE), he's also thinking about grammar and parts of speech.

Axial Exchange has acquired mRemedy, a mobile healthcare platform founded by Mayo Clinic and Minneapolis-based DoApp.

For the first time ever, the United States Olympic Committee will use electronic medical records rather than paper charts to manage care for more that 700 athletes at the summer games.

"Knowledge is key," the saying goes. But sometimes getting to that knowledge – as quickly as possible – can be a challenge for clinicians.

Managing a hospital's operations means dealing with data. Lots and lots of data. That's where executive information systems come in. And as healthcare moves towards hugely different paradigms of care delivery and reimbursement, they're only going to become more crucial to efficient operations.

A quick look at the headlines lately shows that "big data" is a big deal. Healthcare is just starting to realize the potential of gathering, drilling down, mining and analyzing those massive troves of information – and more and more signs point to big data analytics making a big difference.

When people are "moved into a medical environment from their home, it's very disorienting," says Joshua Jacobs, vice president of Windsor Healthcare, a Norwood, N.J.-based recovery, rehabilitation and nursing facility. "When they're taken out of their routine, it's very easy to lose focus."

TriZetto subsidiary Gateway EDI announced Tuesday its acquisition of Sacramento, Calif.-based NHXS, which develops software meant to help medical practices manage physician reimbursement and recover lost revenues.

Data warehousing and decision support aren't exactly new. "Hospitals have had data warehouses for a long time," says Mary Griskewicz, senior director of health information systems at HIMSS. "I was working at a hospital 15 years ago, and we had one."