Brian T. Horowitz

At the TEDMed conference in Washington, D.C, Xerox announced research efforts aimed at digitizing patient information and using natural-language technology to collect unstructured medical data and convert it into formats that can be read by computer applications. Among the projects Xerox unveiled April 10 is the Digital Nurse Assistant from its Parc division. Parc is […]

You’ve heard it before, but a weak password was once again the cause of a data breach. On March 30 a hacker from Eastern Europe illegally accessed a Utah Department of Technology Services (DTS) server containing Social Security numbers for the Medicaid claims. DTS provides technology services to Utah state agencies. The breach involved both […]

Although health care organizations deal with many types of government and professional regulations, as adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) progresses, they also need to form policies of their own to secure patient data, according to an April 11 report from HIMSS Analytics and Kroll Advisory Solutions, a provider of IT security. HIMSS Analytics performs […]

As Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced plans on April 9 to push back the deadline for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 claims-coding system to 2014, the health care IT industry responded with mixed feedback. The proposed delay of one year strikes a fair balance of giving more time to […]

Among health care providers in the United States, social media is used for marketing, but globally, the tools are used more for care management and patient education, according to a new report by CSC, an IT integrator and cloud service provider. In its white paper “Should Healthcare Organizations Use Social Media?” CSC takes a look […]

Tracking your health is fun and games if you’re at St. Barnabas Senior Services in Los Angeles. Microsoft and the City of Los Angeles Department of Aging have announced a project at the facility in which seniors improve their chronic conditions through the use of Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360. Kinect is a controller-free device […]

Biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has launched a unified communications (UC) pilot project using Microsoft Lync to enhance collaboration among sales team members, doctors and external drug researchers. Lync allows workers to conduct voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone calls and keep track of contacts’ availability, as well as participate in videoconferences, instant messaging and Web conferencing. Lync is available […]

Data-visibility vendor Intelleflex has introduced a new GPS-enabled RFID reader and cloud database to monitor the temperature of medication and food throughout the supply chain. Launched on April 3, the CMR-6100 cellular multiprotocol reader and Zest Data Services cloud platform enables manufacturers and health care providers to safeguard food and pharmaceutical items from spoilage and […]

Health information exchanges are beneficial for the continuity of care, but they require privacy and security strategies as well as an effective financial plan to survive, according to an April 2 report by research firm IDC Health Insights. In the report, “Best Practices: Establishing Sustainable Health Information Exchange,” IDC interviewed about 45 executives from organizations […]

With Amazon Web Services able to host 200 terabytes of genetic data in the cloud, medical researchers hope to spot the sequences leading to illnesses such as breast cancer and Parkinson’s disease. At a White House Big Data Summit on March 29, Amazon and the National Institutes of Health announced that they will make the […]