quality of care

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Modernizing Medicine Unveils Population Health Platform and Apple Watch Application at Annual User Conference

Press Release | Modernizing Medicine | November 30, 2016

Specialty-specific health information technology company Modernizing Medicine, Inc. announced major technological advancements to its intuitive suite of products and services at the company’s third annual user conference, MOMENTUM. An enhancement to the company’s specialty-specific electronic health record (EHR) system, EMA, and Practice Management system, Analytics is designed to give physicians near real-time population health data to help support the transition to value-based healthcare...

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StartUp Health Announces 10 Health Moonshots with Global Army of Health Transformers to Improve Health of Everyone in the World

Press Release | StartUp Health | October 24, 2016

Today, StartUp Health, its global army of Health Transformers and Vice President of the United States Joe Biden kicked off the 14th annual Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit sharing an urgent message with nearly 2,000 health leaders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs: the time is now to organize, break down silos, and adopt a “Health Transformer Mindset” to speed up progress in solving big health challenges like ending cancer, ensuring access to care, and improving the wellbeing of people worldwide...

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‘An Embarrassment’: U.S. Health Care Far from the Top in Global Study

Ariana Eunjung Cha | The Washington Post | May 18, 2017

Americans grumble all the time about the quality of our health-care system, but when we're dealing with serious issues, such as injuries from an auto accident or cancer, we often count our blessings that we live in a wealthy country that has well-trained doctors with access to the latest medical technology. Yet those factors don't always correlate with staying alive. That's the distressing finding from a global study of what researchers call “amenable mortality,” or deaths that theoretically could have been avoided by timely and effective medical care...

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15 Blockchain Whitepapers Awarded Winners of US Department of Health and Human Services Challenge

Luke Parker | Brave New Coin | August 30, 2016

A challenge held by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)  to encourage Blockchain use in the Health Information Technology field resulted in 15 winning whitepapers. The Department’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) first announced the “Use of Blockchain in Health IT and Health-Related Research” challenge in July...

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28th VistA Community Meeting: VistA Community Coming Together

Years of efforts dedicated to unifying the VistA community as well as VistA code development effort bore fruit during the 28th VistA Community Meeting (VCM) on January 17-19 in Sacramento, CA.  This year's conference became a transition to a closer collaboration between the VistA community, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the non-profit OSEHRA organization. In effect, the conference was more of a workshop where the participants briefed each other on the latest technical developments as well as strategic efforts to increase collaboration.

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A Nevada Woman Dies of a Superbug Resistant to Every Available Antibiotic in the US

Helen Branswell | STAT | January 12, 2017

If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics. “It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion...

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AMA Adopts Principles to Promote Safe, Effective mHealth Applications

Press Release | American Medical Association (AMA) | November 16, 2016

The American Medical Association (AMA) believes mobile health applications (mHealth apps) and devices that promote safe and effective patient care have the potential to be integrated into everyday practice. During the AMA Interim Meeting, physicians voted to approve a list of principles to guide coverage and payment policies supporting the use of mHealth apps and associated devices that are accurate, effective, safe and secure...

Auriga Releases Open-Source HL7 Library

Press Release | Auriga | January 12, 2017

The amount of patient data generated by various medical devices, wearables, and healthcare apps grows every day. However, hospitals can make use of all this information only in case when their devices and software systems communicate via a common protocol. One of such protocols that allow healthcare apps to securely exchange sensitive patient clinical data with each other is Health Level 7 (HL7), – a globally accepted, widely accredited, and one of the most commonly used set of interoperability standards in the world...

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Australia's Digital Health Strategy Gets the Nod Without Data Interoperability Controls

Asha McLean | ZD Net | August 7, 2017

My Health Record, the Australian government's e-health record system, has been officially given the green light from the Council of Australian Governments Health Council to automatically sign citizens up to the service, allowing them to opt-out if they choose. By 2018, all Australians will have a My Health Record and by 2022, all healthcare providers will be able to contribute to and use health information in My Health Record on behalf of their patients. They will also be able to communicate with other healthcare providers on the clinical status of joint patients via the digital platform...

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Cal INDEX and Inland Empire HIE Will Merge to Form California's Largest Health Information Exchange

Press Release | Cal INDEX | January 17, 2017

The California Integrated Data Exchange (Cal INDEX) and Inland Empire Health Information Exchange (IEHIE) today announced a planned merger that will create one of the nation's most comprehensive nonprofit health information exchanges (HIEs). Claudia Williams, former White House technology senior advisor, will lead the new organization as CEO, effective February 1, 2017. The merger, subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2017 and will operate as a tax-exempt public benefit corporation under a new name...

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CDISC and TransCelerate Announce New Standard for Breast Cancer to Support Data Sharing for Oncology Research

Press Release | CDISC, TransCelerate BioPharma, Inc. | May 18, 2016

The need to rapidly and efficiently share new data in cancer research was recently, and powerfully, highlighted by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden as part of the Cancer Moonshot initiative. The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) and TransCelerate BioPharma, Inc. (“TransCelerate”) announce today the open availability of a new CDISC Therapeutic Area (TA) Standard for Breast Cancer. The CDISC global TA standards can streamline the way clinical research is conducted so that data can be readily shared among clinicians, researchers and regulators around the world, thus leading to more rapid and “smarter” research...

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CHIME and DirectTrust Announce Collaboration

Press Release | CHIME, DirectTrust | August 30, 2017

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and DirectTrust today announced they are collaborating to promote the universal deployment of the DirectTrust framework and health information exchange network as the common electronic interface for health information exchange across the U.S...

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CMS Supports Open Source/Modular Medicaid Information Technology

Andrew Slavitt | CMS Blog | January 11, 2016

Investing in the future of Medicaid is one of the single biggest opportunities in the health care sector...Overall, CMS’ annual investment in state Medicaid Information Technology (IT) is more than $5 billion, enabling states to modernize their Medicaid IT systems to best meet their program, providers’ and beneficiaries’ needs. CMS and states are prepared to invest in innovative solutions. For this investment, we expect significant advances. Our new regulations require that states evolve their legacy Medicaid IT systems to leverage reusable solutions, and to practice industry-proven IT methods such as use of modularity, reuse, shared services (including Software-as-a-Service) by fundamentally shifting the financial incentives away from custom development. This opens opportunity to smaller vendors to develop focused solutions for use across multiple states or to introduce solutions from comparable sectors such as commercial insurance or large provider systems.

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CMS’ Accountable Health Communities Model Selects 32 Participants to Serve as Local ‘Hubs’ Linking Clinical and Community Services

Press Release | Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | April 6, 2017

Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for applications for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s (Innovation Center) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) model. Over a five-year period, CMS will implement and test the three-track AHC model to support local communities in addressing the health-related social needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries by bridging the gap between clinical and community service providers...

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Donald Berwick on Better Care as a Route to Financial Success

Tinker Ready | Health Leaders Media | January 7, 2016

The former head of CMS says "we will never solve the problem of cost and finance by focusing on cost and finance." Instead, it will be resolved "by focusing on the design and redesign of healthcare and the improvement of its quality." ... The former head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the newest member of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission talked with HealthLeaders Media this week. This is the first of a two-part interview. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

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