Similar to the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014, healthcare IT will play a critical role in tracking the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne flavivirus that causes flulike symptoms in patients and is particularly concerning for pregnant women. The virus is currently spreading in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, and disease surveillance technology is key […]
In the beginning, the benefits of health IT for patients and their families were to reduce paperwork, help doctors coordinate patients' care, protect their patient info, reduce unnecessary tests, ensure the correct medication is prescribed and allow patients to access their own records. Years after the inception of moving paper medical records to electronic, health IT benefits […]
As more healthcare organizations realize the need for a CISO in addition to a CIO, the CISO is becoming healthcare organizations’ most valuable player against data breaches. These Chief Information Security Officer positions are hard to fill, and when a business does find them, they’re hard to keep, said a USA Today article on the […]
As more and more go-lives are completed and hospital staff are trained for EHR utilization, "healthcare analytics" is a topic increasingly brought up in conversation among health IT professionals and physicians. In 2016, healthcare organizations will continue to focus on analytics and the ability to transform large amounts of data into meaningful information that can be utilized […]
Cognitive computing and virtual care are among the big IT trends that will transform healthcare delivery in the next 12-36 months, say industry analysts at IDC, a leading IT advisory firm. The group is forecasting increased adoption of new technologies to improve diagnoses, reduce cost and mortality and personalize the patient experience. IDC Research […]
Connected health, or cHealth, can possibly save patients with major chronic conditions between $1,000 and $2,000 annually, according to a new report from Deloitte. The report, “Accelerating the Adoption of Connected Health,” explores how the increasingly competitive healthcare market is prompting many healthcare organizations to streamline and improve care delivery, including increasing care accessibility and […]
IBM's top physician says the supercomputing power of Watson will help healthcare providers “personalize and predict outcomes.” Kyu Rhee, MD, is a primary care physician and the Chief Health Officer for IBM's workforce. According to Fortune, Rhee is joining IBM's Watson Health unit with the same title. “This is really the natural evolution of what […]
While HIPAA privacy and security rules are standardized, healthcare organizations still must interpret the rules to determine how to assess their own risk of security breaches - and prevent them. The infographic below from PerfectServe outlines the problem with protecting health information, that electronic protected health information, or ePHI, is being compromised by cyber-attacks and […]
Long before “the cloud” was a term used in everyday language, Salesforce was singing its praises. Since 1999 when the company first opened its physical and virtual doors, Salesforce has grown to include thousands of partners, 2,800 apps on the Salesforce AppExchange and more than 150,000 customers, and according to a recent IDC report, it’s […]
With mHealth touted as the next big thing in the health information technology space, med tech companies should be “thorough and deliberate” when determining an mHealth strategy, says a new report from Deloitte. The report, “Mobilizing MedTech for mHealth,” defines critical decision points for med tech companies designing and deploying mHealth-enabled care, including preventative care […]
In the past, consumers didn't have much control over what their health insurance covered, or even which health insurance they had. HR specialists and brokers made most of the brand decisions for them. But the times, they are a-changin', as consumers are predicted to drive more than $650 billion of health insurance decisions annually by […]
Four-fifths (81%) of executives at healthcare providers and payers say their information technology has been compromised by cyber-attacks, says a new report. The 2015 KPMG Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey found that among the 223 chief information officers, chief technology officers and chief compliance officers polled, their healthcare organizations have been compromised by at least one malware, […]