Interoperability

Healthcare leaders say deploying tools for analytics, self-service, order fulfillment and more, while offering individualized experiences such as precision medicine, could promise a big payoff.

It's now easier than ever for criminals to get into hospital networks, and ransomware is on the rise. Cybersecurity experts offer advice to help hospitals beat back the hackers.

The cross-vendor data exchange using IHE and FHIR specifications showed off promising strides, while the industry is still working toward more widespread, real-world use cases.

The Samsam and Maktub Locker malicious code programs attack vulnerable patches and spread to all systems connected to a network.  

The United States Department of Homeland Security and the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Center issued a joint cyber alert on March 31, in response to the recent surge in ransomware attacks on hospitals and other organizations.

PowerWare is similar to the Locky virus in that it's delivered via email through a Microsoft Word document that resembles an invoice and locks down the system until the ransom is paid.

UH CMIO Jeffrey Sunshine said that deploying an interoperability tool and new modules will help the hospital to create a single patient record physicians can access at the point of care.

Leading providers are already thinking about how to transform themselves from data-driven to information-driven organizations, able to offer drastically improved patient experience akin to Amazon and Google. But it's not easy.

HIMSS Analytics said the Epic shop saw a return on its investment in half the expected time.

EHR makers including Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, drchrono, Epic and McKesson said they will embrace open specs including S4S APIs and FHIR to connect research apps to electronic health records software.