Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

Usability is one of the major barriers for health IT adoption, particularly for electronic health records. It was no surprise then that a capacity number of attendees took on the challenge of working through various usability research methods in the workshop Usability 101: Applied Methods.

Officials at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) said Friday they plan to urge the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) for no ICD-10 delay.

One of the biggest objections to the adoption of an EMR is its usability (or lack thereof), which is no surprise considering the ease of its predecessor: paper. Thankfully, there are a few ways to make your system not only more bearable, but significantly easier to use.

Premier healthcare alliance has partnered with Carmel, Ind.-based Clinical Architecture in an effort to normalize disparate healthcare data and help care providers better understand and use health information.

Atul Gawande, MD, a surgeon, public health researcher and a writer for The New Yorker, advocates a mindset switch from docs as cowboys to docs as pit crews. Gawande also urges the smart use of data and a well-designed checklist for better and safer care.

The GOP primary candidates head to Nevada on Saturday, a state with poor healthcare and few healthcare resources -- also one that has plunged in and begun implementing what it can of the Affordable Care Act, even though many in the state don't agree with the politics of it.

With Minnesota's GOP caucus set for Feb. 7, we spoke to the North Star State's health IT honcho about public-private partnerships, electronic health records, health information exchange, telehealth and more. Often billed as the healthiest state in the U.S., Minnesota has long been a healthcare IT leader.

The Premier healthcare alliance has joined with Verisk Health, which develops risk assessment and decision analytics technology, to offer data to hospitals and health systems meant to help better measure the health of their communities and develop new care models.

Healthcare technology stocks don't have the obvious roadblocks facing many other healthcare sectors in 2012, according to industry analysts who spoke to an audience of 600 at the Nashville Health Care Council on Feb. 1.

A think tank with a healthcare task force chaired by former Senators Tom Daschle, a Democrat, and Bill Frist, MD, a Republican, is advocating for improved and better-used health information technology. Among the group's recommendations is "robust" data exchange.