Healthcare organizations have seen an explosive health data growth rate of 878 percent since 2016, reaching 8.41 petabytes (PB) on average in 2018, according statistics compiled by Dell EMC.
The scale of this health data explosion has opened these organizations up to data disruption attacks and challenged their abilities and resources to protect...
Contractual and intellectual property rights (IPR) are being used to limit access to electronic health information (EHI) and to prevent competition from developers of healthcare interoperability technologies, warned Donald Rucker, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, during a May 7 Senate hearing.
These barriers frustrate...
Savannah, GA-based St. Joseph's/Candler is rolling out a patient navigation system to help patients and visitors find their way around its new 83,600 square-foot Pooler medical campus.
The Pooler campus is designed as a high-tech healthcare center, offering a range of medical services for the expanding population in West Chatham and nearby...
More than a quarter of medical devices are running Windows 7, which will no longer be supported by Microsoft after January 14 of next year, according to a survey of 600 global healthcare IT professionals (150 from the United States) by Censuswide on behalf security firm Infoblox.
A disturbing 16.6 percent of U.S. healthcare IT professionals do...
Data tracking has become increasingly important with the explosion of information in the healthcare environment.
The benefits of tracking data are synchronizing large data sets generated by devices, accurately timing electronic data transfers, improving artificial intelligence algorithms, and tracking medical supply chains, explained Arlen...
CMS Administrator Seema Verma laid out her agency’s strategy to reduce barriers to medical device innovation in the Medicare program, during a May 2 speech at the Medical Device Manufacturers Association annual meeting.
Verma said that her agency is tackling outmoded regulations around coverage, coding, and payment to reduce unpredictability...
Lawmakers blasted Department of Defense (DoD) officials over delays in the deployment and integration of its new electronic health record (EHR) system, during a May 1 hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) criticized the lack of urgency on the part of DoD representatives who testified at...
AdventHealth Gordon and AdventHealth Murray in northern Georgia have partnered with Chattanooga, TN-based Erlanger Health System to provide telestroke services to their patients.
The new partnership is expected to improve access to specialty trained stroke neurologists to consult and diagnose patients at the AdventHealth regional hospitals.
By...
HHS established internal performance metrics for its component agencies that officials believe led to increased effectiveness in implementing the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
As a result, HHS improved its FITARA scorecard grade from...
Healthcare organizations are becoming more comfortable putting sensitive PHI in the cloud, observed Mike Jude, digital health research manager at Frost & Sullivan.
“For many cloud service providers, it's easy to put fairly good security on the cloud. Especially if you're in healthcare, putting a lot of your data in the cloud is...
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two wearable devices designed to monitor patient’s vital signs.
The FDA cleared an artificial intelligence-powered wearable device made by Current Health that monitors patient vital signs at the hospital and at home.
Current said it has partnered with six of the largest U.S....
The Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University (ASU) have selected six digital health startups for their MedTech Accelerator program.
The accelerator, part of the Mayo Clinic Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care, is designed for early stage medical device and health IT companies looking to get their innovations to market.
“The...
The proliferation of healthcare internet of things (IoT) has exposed a vulnerable attack surface that can be exploited by cybercriminals determined to steal PHI and disrupt healthcare delivery, warned the Vectra 2019 Spotlight Report on Healthcare.
Unpartitioned networks, insufficient access controls, and the reliance on legacy systems adds to the...
Health IT interoperability obstacles continue to plague federal government efforts to share health data about Native American veterans, concluded a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Healthcare officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), HHS’s Indian Health Service (HIS), and tribal health programs (THP) interviewed by...
HHS has issued three documents for public comment that are designed to support network-to-network health data exchange nationwide.
The three documents are second drafts of the Trusted Exchange Framework (TEF) and the Minimum Required Terms and Conditions (MRTCs) for trusted exchange and a first draft of the Qualified Health Information Network...
HHS OIG has determined that the department’s IT security program was “not effective” because it did not meet security levels required by the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA).
OIG identified HHS IT security weaknesses in the areas of risk management, configuration management, identity and access management,...
Healthcare providers and payers are suffering from a “technology hangover” when trying to decide on a range of health IT products and solutions, judged Sage Growth Partners in their new study The Growth Manifesto.
Providers and payers struggle to prioritize their health IT investment as they choose from an array of new...
Roger Smith, PhD, and his team at Florida-based AdventHealth Nicholson Center recently conducted a successful Department of Defense (DoD)-funded trial on remote robotic surgery.
Smith, who is chief technology officer at the center, and his team used a dedicated fiber optic campus network to perform the remote robotic surgery.
“The...
A flaw in the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard could compromise medical device security and be used by attackers to embed malware in medical images, warned Markel Picado Ortiz, a security researcher with Cylera Labs.
DICOM is a data standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information in...
The U.S. Department of Defense has granted Vocera an authority to operate (ATO), which extends the potential purchase and deployment of the hands-free Vocera Badge clinical communication and workflow solution beyond the Army to facilities in the Air Force and Navy.*
The Army is currently using hands-free Vocera Badges to facility...
