Dr. John Halamka leads the powerful HITSPA (Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel), which is working on specs for electronic health records and interoperability, which is much easier said than done. In an interview that I did with Halamka not long ago, the healthcare leader (he’s CIO of CareGroup Healthcare System) emphasized the importance of having a business case for technology. Read more...

Clinical information systems have become more connected to remote services while privacy regulations continue to be a cause for concern. “Protecting confidential data online is of increasing importance to organizations across a broad range of sectors. With HIPAA and other patient privacy measures in place, healthcare organizations are under increasing scrutiny to safeguard private health information,” said Sanjay Mehta, senior vice president for Breach Security. Read more...

2008 accelerated “doctor-squeeze” – a relatively recent phenomenon that financially and emotionally pressures doctors between government and insurance mandates, and patient expectations. Costly technology purchases could no longer be postponed by doctors in 2008, even while an ugly recession eroded patients’ ability to pay. And, insurance restrictions on care delivery further zapped physician morale. Read more...

Perhaps no other field has been as grossly over-burdened by technology as the physician practice. “A big challenge for non-institutional providers is funding; they are struggling to fund their own IT investments like e-prescribing, and EMR systems and are getting more pressure from Washington all the time to invest in these technologies,” says Carl Doty, principal analyst at Forrester Research. Read more...