News

IBM, the U.S. Social Security Administration and MedVirginia, Virginia's regional health information organization, have launched an electronic records exchange system to help speed the process of granting disability benefits.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina is boosting its consumer transparency through two new Web tools.

QuantiaMD is offering members free access to its interactive physician community though a new iPhone application.

The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, a not-for-profit pharmacy standards development organization, has formed a new group to help U.S. healthcare standards development organizations collaborate with each other.

Medica, a health insurance company headquartered in Minneapolis, has paid more than $3 million in the past year to providers in its network for improvements in clinical care provided to members.

Epidemiologists and computer scientists at the University of Iowa have successfully piloted a low-cost, green technology for automatically tracking the use of hand hygiene at hospitals.

The economic decline is continuing to pummel hospitals in the form of reduction of reimbursements, rise of uninsured patients and decrease in number of elective procedures for insured patients.

Microsoft and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) have partnered to launch a Microsoft Health Users Group (MS-HUG) in the Asia-Pacific region, providing regional healthcare organizations and technology partners with access to an online forum to facilitate the development of healthcare solutions.

AllOne Health, one of several vendors offering tools for the display and transmission of personal health records via mobile phone, has added more than 42,000 potential users to its network through two recent partnerships.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA, may be the driver for connecting HIEs to P4P, said Janet Marchibroda, chief healthcare officer for IBM.