Health IT Business News Wrap-up – July 15, 2012

This Week’s Health IT Business News

IDC Health Insights released a new report evaluating the Health Information Exchange (HIE) marketplace. Not surprising, the report found the enterprise market is driving HIE technology as demonstrating meaningful use and pursuing collaborative care strategy requires the ability to exchange health information across the enterprise systems.

HealthcareIT News reported this week that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may release guidelines to govern certain medical apps. The FDA’s path was cleared this week with President Obama signing the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (S. 3187).

The House voted for a second time yesterday to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly know as “Obamacare”. The House of Representatives voted 244-to-185 to repeal ACA. The vote to repeal came after the law was mostly upheld by the Supreme Court last month.

Results of a KPMG Poll conducted in May of 220 hospitals and health systems suggests EHR Implementation may still cost too much, even with government EHR incentives. Gary Anthony of KPMG Healthcare said their findings suggest healthcare executives miscalculated the costs of their EHR projects.

US Olympians will use Electronic Health Records in London. This is a story we blogged about back on May 29. The Time Magazine article this past week gives further details on the the US Olympic committee’s partnership with GE.

AlliedHIE and ICA have gone live with a DIRECT and Health Information Services Provider (HISP) network in Pennsylvania. The live environment will enable AlliedHIE to begin recruiting physicians and other providers to sign up for secure DIRECT interactions with each other as part of the statewide DIRECT grant program recently established by the Pennsylvania eHealth Collaborative (PAeHC).

Health 2.0 and the ONC announced the launch of a new Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative competition. The “SMART-Indivo App Challenge” hopes to  engage the developer community in creating innovative health IT technology applications. The program is now accepting submission.

TechCrunch reports on torrid pace of Digital Health funding. After seeing investments in digital health double from 2009 to 2011, the torrid pace of growth has continued in the first half of 2012, seeing 73% more investments than the same time last year.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has  issued guidance to improve pediatric EHR design and usability. A Human Factors Guide to Enhance EHR Usability of Critical User Interactions when Supporting Pediatric Patient Care (NISTIR 7865) was developed with help from experts in pediatrics and informatics.

In our own bit of business news this week, we announced our partnership with UBM Medica US to market our health IT Internet radio station, HealthcareNOWradio.com.  You can read more about this partnership here.