Neil Versel

Some healthcare organizations use homegrown tracking technologies to avoid third-party disclosures of protected information, but all have to understand if their practices comply with applicable privacy laws, says Betsy Hodge, partner at Akerman.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Texas, the hospital group says enforcement of the Office for Civil Rights' regs on pixel tracking tools would disrupt the "balance that HIPAA and its regulations strike between privacy and information-sharing."

Convincing doctors to embrace EHRs and other new tools takes data, Mayo Clinic chief executive John Noseworthy said, and once they see the impact and the value they will move much more quickly. 

Health insurer WellPoint is the launch partner for an online continuing medical education program emphasizing a global focus to diagnosing diseases, something that might have been helpful in handling recent Ebola cases.

With all the talk about patient engagement as a component of both meaningful use and of healthcare quality improvement, it seems to be lacking in one of the most obvious places of all: the hospital room.

In case anyone was still wondering about a leadership vacuum at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Karen DeSalvo, MD, is still national coordinator -- a fact that was in evidence Wednesday at the close of the American Medical Informatics Association's annual conference.

At the American Medical Informatics Association's annual symposium today, developers and backers of public application programming interfaces talked about how the standard could speed interoperability with add-on apps to enterprise EHRs, and help make those bulky systems more nimble.

Without good data, patient-centeredness is just a buzzword. And without a patient-centric focus and proper organization, data can be rather useless. That was the message Sunday from Amy Abernethy, MD, who delivered the opening keynote address at the American Medical Informatics Association's annual symposium.

As ONC refines its 10-year vision for interoperability, a diverse coalition of private and public interests has put forth its own ideas for transforming U.S. healthcare through IT. The eHealth Initiative on Thursday released its "2020 Roadmap," spelling out its goals for achieving the Triple Aim.

As we head into Congress' lame-duck session, the national policy agenda for healthcare CIOs will revolve around meaningful use, cybersecurity, ICD-10 and patient safety. At the CHIME 2014 Fall CIO Forum, Capitol Hill insiders offered strategies for managing the multitude of rules.