Mayo Clinic's Patient iPad app
"HIPAA is a valve, not a blockage." At least, that's what Office of Civil Rights (OCR) director Leon Rodriguez has said about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Discussions of the national health information privacy and security act often revolve around the ways it limits access to patient health information, rather than the ways in...
Skype has been playing around the edges of mobile health and telehealth for at least the last three years. Through Verizon, it was a sponsor of the mHealth Summit in 2010. It also has teamed with the University of California, San Francisco, to make video calling available to hospital patients.
Last year, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology mentioned Skype as...
Humetrix iBlueButton app won the ONC's Blue Button Mashup Challenge.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is working to promote more patient engagement and access with their own records. One avenue of this work is with the Meaningful Use Stage 2 guidelines, but the office is also working with data holders and app developers to encourage the development...
Care Thread, a Providence, Rhode Island-based company that makes a secure messaging app for doctors, has announced $250,000 in seed funding from Slater Technology Fund. Care Thread CEO Dr. Scott Guelich told MobiHealthNews that the company has raised an additional $100,000 from undisclosed angel investors. Slater Technology Fund is a Rhode Island-based economic development fund with a focus on...
While hospital CIOs and privacy officers sweat over the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and the BYOD phenomenon, federal health IT officials are trying to put their minds at ease with a series of resources to help providers safeguard patients' protected health information.
Wednesday at its annual meeting in Washington, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology...
(Left to Right) Penelope Hughes, Andrew Litt, Rohit Nayak, and Omar Hussein
When Meaningful Use Stage 2 roles out in 2013, one guideline hospital's EHRs will have to meet is increased protection of patient health information. That means the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will be doing audits for HIPAA-compliance.
The OCR fined Massachusetts Eye and Ear associates $1.5 million in September when...
It has been years in the making, but text messaging is finally overtaking the antiquated pager as a means for physicians and hospital staff to communicate with each other, at least within children's hospitals.
In a survey of 106 physicians at pediatric hospitals, researchers from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita found that 27 percent named texting their preferred method for...
Though the Food and Drug Administration is developing regulations for mobile medical apps, at least one member of Congress believes the federal agency is not currently equipped to handle the rapid pace of innovation in mobile technology.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose district covers much of Silicon Valley, is preparing to introduce legislation that would address this perceived shortcoming by...
New York City-based pingMD, also known as Dauphin Health, recently raised $1.33 million, according to a regulatory filing with the SEC. The company had previously raised about $400,000 in mid-2010. PingMD describes itself an app that offers parents a quick and easy way to message their child's pediatrician and a more efficient way for physicians to communicate with their patients.
PingMD's Co-...
Perhaps you've seen last month's report from Kaiser Health News that more than 2,200 hospitals—almost two-thirds of all U.S. acute care facilities—face Medicare payment deductions starting Oct. 1 because too many patients with three common but treatable conditions were readmitted within 30 days of initial discharge. That's going to cost those hospitals a total of $280 million during federal...
