News
The University of Texas at Austin's new Health Information Technology program is being bolstered by a $2.7 million federal grant that will support four programs aimed at "fast tracking" university graduates into the field of healthcare information technology.
Maine has won approval from the federal government for the full use of its grant of nearly $6.6 million to expand and coordinate health information technology throughout the state, Gov. John E. Baldacci announced on Wednesday.
Yale School of Medicine is in the process of notifying approximately 1,000 individuals whose clinical health information was contained on a laptop computer that was recently stolen.
The federal Health IT Policy Committee has endorsed a set of recommendations on when healthcare providers must obtain consent before exchanging patient heath records electronically with other clinicians, testing labs or health information exchange (HIE) networks.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will announce the names of the authorized testing and certification bodies (ATCB) "soon," according to Carol Bean, ONC's division director for certification and testing.
Maine healthcare providers launched their first official telehealth summit on Tuesday with a message to the rest of the country: The first state to see the sun rise each day also aims to be one of the leaders in this rapidly growing healthcare delivery model.
Health information exchanges cannot share sensitive patient information beyond a simple point-to-point exchange without first obtaining a patient's consent, concluded the federal privacy and security tiger team.
Preventing patient data breaches is cited as the number one priority for healthcare IT decision makers, but work remains for complying with security regulations, according to a national survey that examines IT trends in healthcare.
With states either submitting or receiving approval from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT of their strategic and operational plans for statewide HIEs, the HIE market is booming for vendors.
"Trends in technology are changing the employment landscape," said Terry Erdle, senior vice president, skills certification of CompTIA at Breakaway 2010, the premier event for IT companies in North America. That means IT workers will need to have different and more advanced skills.