Telehealth

Every year HIMSS calls on Congress with requests specific to advancing health IT. We check in to see what happened since 2014.

A pilot program at Vanderbilt University and VA found that patients, nearly three-quarter of whom preferred telehealth, received the same quality of care via video and phone as those who came into the hospital.

Recent research has found that sending patients a text message encouraging healthy behaviors reduces smoking rates and improves weight loss when compared to a group that did not receive the texts.

There are almost 5 billion connected smart devices already in use. A significant percentage of them are medical devices, from pacemakers to drug pumps. They're already being hacked so often that the trend has its own nickname.

Computerized psychotherapies hold great interest for veterans receiving outpatient treatment, according to a study published in Telemedicine and e-Health.

The 10th annual Epocrates Future Physicians of America survey reveals that medical students are overwhelmed about a number of issues, chief among them: interoperability.

Of the 165,000 apps residing in Apple and Google stores, a surprisingly minute number comprise 50 percent of all downloads. And those that connect to providers are considerably smaller than that in number.

In a new healthcare era, where "patients and their care partners participate actively in decision-making and priority-setting," FDA plans to gain better perspective through its first-ever Patient Engagement Advisory Committee.

The latest mHealth innovation may also be the most cuddly.

In health IT, the lingo is continuously evolving and stakeholders don't necessarily agree on a single definition for each term. Sometimes these new terms even just describe older concepts. Little wonder, our columnist writes, that providers sometimes feel in the dark.