Mike Miliard

MedeAnalytics, a provider of healthcare performance management solutions such as on-demand analytics, announced Wednesday the launch of its new accountable care organization solution, alongside an ACO resource center for provider and payer organizations.

In an investment it expects will pay dividends as healthcare IT usage grows apace, Aetna announced Tuesday that it would spend $500 million to acquire Medicity, the Salt Lake City-based developer of health information exchange technology.

As it seeks to expand its suite of clinical solutions for unified patient information management (UPIM), NaviNet, the biggest healthcare communications network in the country, has acquired Prematics, a provider of mobile care management solutions.

Picis has been awarded a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contract to implement an anesthesia record keeping (ARK) system in the Stars & Stripes Healthcare Network, a Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) serving Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.

As many had predicted, 2010 was a year of mergers and acquisitions. Industry insiders expect this reshaping and consolidation will continue apace into 2011 and beyond.

In August, rush begins to certify EHRs.

In September, Healthcare IT News explained how one lawsuit against a nascent health information exchange could be a sign of things to come as states get their own HIEs up and running.

In June, one of the biggest mergers of EHR vendors in quite some time was the talk of the healthcare IT world.

In June, Healthcare IT News reported on a burgeoning trend – a wider embracing of the flexibility and collaboration afforded by open source technology.

In January, a provocative survey sponsored jointly by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and Dell, found that data centers of small and medium-sized hospitals in North America, Europe and China are not prepared for the "wave of data" that will soon be inundating them.