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The Defense Health Agency is working on a way for a person injured overseas to have instant access to world-class health care. Cmdr. Tony Thornton, deputy director of the Health Information Technology Directorate at DHA, said the technology for making such connectivity possible was already available. […]

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell this week announced an anti-fraud task force led by the Justice and Health and Human Services Departments executed the largest takedown of health care fraud in U.S. history, charging 301 individuals in 36 Federal districts for health care schemes equaling $900 million. […]

Higher education students bring their own devices onto campus, causing universities and colleges to re-evaluate their security and access structure. Students are “bringing their own computers and applications and they want us to secure it,” said Mehran Basiratmand, CTO at Florida Atlantic University. “One solution fitting all higher ed is no longer the case.” […]

More than 80 percent of non-Federal, acute care hospitals as of 2015 reported electronically exchanging lab results, radiology reports, clinical care summaries, or medication lists with ambulatory care providers and hospitals outside of their organization in a new study released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. […]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights released an infographic, “Your Health Information, Your Rights,” to provide health consumers with facts on an individual’s right to access their medical records, examples of how to obtain medical records, and tips for protecting health information. […]

Doctors and researchers believe they can understand and eventually cure cancer through data sets, with the launch of the Genomic Data Commons, a system that promotes sharing of genomic and clinical data among researchers. […]

There is a growing, concerning gap between patient expectations and actual experience, according to panelists at the ONC National Meeting. “Many of us still have issues getting or accessing our health information, and if you are like me, it seems to be a never-ending saga,” said Lana Moriarty, director of consumer health at ONC. […]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) have been working together to try to remove barriers to health data exchange. […]

Data breaches are costing the health care industry an estimated $6.2 billion, with 89% of organizations represented in a new study by the Ponemon Institute having experienced a data breach in the past two years and 45% reporting more than five breaches in the same time period. […]

For the first time, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the Medicare standardized payment amount, which makes Medicare payments across all geographic areas comparable.
The information was part of the third annual release of the Physician and Other Supplier Utilization and Payment public use data. […]

Disrupt or be disrupted. That’s the way Dave Dimond, chief technology officer for Global Healthcare Business at EMC Corp., sees the IT business—especially for those in the rapidly changing health care sector. Dimond said the challenge health care providers face has everything to do with meeting patient expectations in a world “where they want things, and they want them now.” […]

Many Americans’ electronically stored medical data is likely unsecured and inaccurate, according to panelists at the Health Datapalooza. “There are real-world consequences to medical data sharing,” said privacy and medical attorney Neal Eggeson. […]

Vice President Joe Biden implored attendees of the Health Datapalooza to join in his effort to make cancer data more accessible and usable. “We really need you,” Biden said. […]

Analysis of big data is having a noticeable impact on reducing the opioid addiction epidemic in the U.S., according to panelists at the Health Datapalooza. “Having good surveillance has allowed us to stay ahead of what’s coming into our communities,” said Dana Quesinberry of Kentucky. […]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will be offering two awards with a total of $1.5 million in funding opportunities for projects that advance common standards designed to improve health information for both consumers and providers. […]

Government officials and industry leaders will try to get to the bottom of why interoperability has been so difficult to achieve, they said at the second meeting of the Joint Health IT Policy and Standards Committee Meeting Interoperability Experience Task Force. […]

The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology released a report that suggests 12 current and future technologies and policies that could help older people live longer, more engaged lives. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services wants to develop consumer and health care provider apps that are easier to understand. So it is launching a three-part initiative that includes software developer challenges with big-money rewards. […]

To help strengthen consumers’ knowledge of health IT products, U.S. Health and Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology proposed a new rule: the “ONC Health IT Certification Program: Enhanced Oversight and Accountability” proposal. […]

A group of senior IT executives and former CIOs are attempting to direct the presidential candidates’ attention to the urgent needs of IT policy in the Federal government. They released a report, titled “Tech Iconoclasts – Voting for America’s Success in a Network World,” an open letter to the candidates that outlines five key needs in Federal IT and recommends policy to address these needs. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving aggressively to institute a new system to plan and manage IT projects, effectively replacing the agile development methodology championed by former chief information officers Roger Baker and Stephen Warren. VA CIO LaVerne Council told a MyVA Advisory Committee meeting last week that she has hired the second of three senior executives to lead the new IT Account Management organization. […]

The 34-page Protected Health Information (PHI) Data Breach Report analyzed 392 million security incidents and 1,931 data breaches, including breaches at the Department of Health and Human Services and a “significant number of records” from the Department of Veterans Affairs. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a little-known contract Tuesday for virtual reality software that could one day have a dramatic impact on the ability of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to deal with the various symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In a relatively small contract of just $77,496, the VA partnered with the […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is looking for two “experienced and energetic innovators” to help expand and modernize the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS). The two new hires?a software platforms architect and a data integration and management architect?would be part of the CDC Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program and would work hand-in-hand with […]

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