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FALLS CHURCH, VA - A Virginia-based, seven-hospital healthcare system with ties to Washington D.C. is getting some financial help for its fledgling telehealth program.

Any mass casualty event, from a traffic accident to a plane crash to a structure fire, usually causes chaos among patients and responders. Two healthcare IT companies are looking to ease that confusion with a joint tracking solution designed to guide patient and provider from triage through hospital admission and discharge.

Hennepin County Medical Center, a 477-bed hospital in downtown Minneapolis, is ready to display its meaningful use readiness to the world. And Chief Medical Information Officer Kevin Larson says the hospital wouldn't be ready if it hadn't embraced mobile health."We have to break through this tyranny of everyone has to come to our door to get care," he said, pointing out that the hospital is deploying laptops with full-function electronic health records and will soon be deploying its own smartphone apps for physicians and other staff.

During UC Irvine's White Coat Ceremony on Friday each member of the School of Medicine's incoming class of 2015 will receive an iPad as part of its initiative to provide students with a digital medical education.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is hosting the Sixth Annual National Health IT Week Sept. 12-16, 2011 in Washington, DC.HIMSS officials bill the event as "a collaborative forum, where public and private healthcare constituents can work in partnership to educate industry and policy stakeholders on the value of health IT for the U.S. healthcare system."