News

Unified communications (UC), which has become a hot issue among IT leaders and administrators, has recently been bolstered by video - and the "prognosis for its use in healthcare appears to hold promise," says one expert.

Physicians and patients alike are ready to move registration, prescription renewal, bill pay and other services online, according to a new study from Intuit Health. The Intuit Health Patient Engagement Study of 556 U.S. practices was conducted in April and found that 95 percent of doctors want their patients to fill out medical and registration forms online before their appointment. When Intuit Health asked patients about filling out forms and the registration process, 81 percent said they'd like to move this task online too.

HP, SingTel, HealthSTATS and Frontier Healthcare Group have announced that an 8-week clinical trial of a mobile health monitoring solution for heart disease is currently underway in Singapore.

The Aetna Foundation, the philanthropic arm of healthcare insurer Aetna, has partnered with the conference Health 2.0 to issue a developer challenge. The intent is to spur new interactive browser-based applications designed to make data about obesity more accessible and usable.Aetna Foundation President Anne C. Beal, MD, announced the challenge June 9 at the Health Data Initiative Forum at the Institute of Medicine meeting in Bethesda, Md.

At the close of the Health Data Initiative Forum held on Thursday, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra announced StartUp Health, a strategic initiative designed to improve access to capital, education and resources for health and wellness entrepreneurs.StartUp Health CEO Steve Krein said the initiative will be led by former Time Warner Chairman and CEO, and current Director of OrganizedWisdom, Jerry Levin.

Forty-five new and updated health applications that harness the power of open data from HHS and other sources are being presented Thursday at the 2nd Annual Health Data Initiative Forum in New York. The initiative was opened by Matt Miller, host of NPR's Left, Right & Center, who called the work being presented "the beginning of enormous sets of innovative data" being used to "touch all our lives as patients."