Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

For wearable technology to live up to the hype, especially when it comes to healthcare, it will have to be "interoperable, integrated, engaging, social and outcomes-driven," according to PwC.

Frustration with electronic health records has never been higher among RNs, with vast majorities complaining of poor workflows, bad communication and scant input on implementation decisions, a new survey shows.

The folks at Penn Medicine know a little something about putting data analytics to work. After identifying three years ago that their sepsis mortality rates were higher than expected, they set out to do something about it by harnessing predictive analytics. And the results? They're impressive.

In a congressional hearing Thursday, a Texas Health Resources executive joined other clinical stakeholders in the U.S. Ebola crisis to shed light on the myriad oversights that materialized when the Ebola virus arrived on American soil.

Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of standards organization HL7, came away from the joint meeting of the federal Health IT Policy and Health IT Standards committees earlier this week, thinking that the industry could move faster on interoperability. And HL7 has just the thing to change the game.

ONC's work to drive interoperability is under perhaps more intense scrutiny than ever. Yet, a sense emerged on Wednesday morning during a meeting of the joint HIT Policy and Standards Committees that, while much work remains, the notion that there is no interoperability in America is wrong.

A coalition of healthcare associations today called on HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell to revamp the meaningful use program. "Without changes to the MU program and a new emphasis for interoperable EHRs/EMRs systems and HIT infrastructure, we believe that the opportunity to leverage these technologies will not be realized," the organizations wrote.

Here's the good news: Seventy-seven percent of free-standing physician practices have an ambulatory electronic medical record system installed, and a robust 90 percent of hospital-owned providers are up and running with EMRs. But there's not-so-good news, too.

Providers have begun to make targeted use of leading-edge technologies to optimize their electronic medical records, but the vast majority don't yet have the IT capacity to make full use of advancements such as big data and the cloud.

Stage 2 of meaningful use is supposed to be about interoperability of data, with electronic records flowing securely between sites as needed to help hospitals and doctors provide better care. But the number of attestations to Stage 2 has been anemic, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting true interoperability is a long way off.