This Week’s Health IT Business News
This week’s business news saw a familiar name. The Commonwealth Fund has named former National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, M.D., as its next president. Dr.Blumenthal will succeed Karen Davis on January 1, 2013. The Commonwealth Fund mission is to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable. The Fund carries out this mandate by supporting independent research on health care issues and making grants to improve health care practice and policy. Find full details in the press release issued by The Commonwealth Fund.
In other appointment news, ICA has named Rodney M. Hamilton, MD, as their Chief Medical Information Officer. ICA is a leading provider of interoperability technology to enable health information exchange (HIE). Prior to joining ICA, Dr. Hamilton was the CMIO at PointClear Solutions. Dr. Hamilton has also held leadership positions in information technology at Vanguard Health Systems, McKesson Provider Technologies and Brentwood Pediatrics. Read ICA’s press release here.
Several large contracts were announced this week starting with Providence Health & Services selection of Nuance Healthcare’s voice recognition software. The Dragon Medical 360 product will be deployed across Providence’s healthcare network of 27 hospitals and 250 clinics and integrated with the network’s Epic EHR. Read more here.
Health Language, Inc. (HLI) announced that NextGen Healthcare has selected its Language Engine (LE) and provider-friendly terminology (PFT) to enhance physician documentation and billing workflow. The HLI tools will help standardize terminologies such as SNOMED and ICD-10 within the NextGen EHR, Practice Management and Health Information Exchange products to support Stage 2 Meaningful Use and ICD-10 implementation requirements. Read more on Businesswire.com.
It wouldn’t be a week of business news without mentioning mobile apps. Azumio announced it will acquire Skyhealth, makers of the mobile health apps Fitness Buddy and Glucose Budd. Medipattern closed on the acquisition of Mytrak Health System’s Mobile Technology Business Unit, including intellectual property and patented technology.
Got a startup idea to transform our healthcare system? Morgenthaler Ventures and Health 2.0 DC to VC: Health IT Startup Showcase is holding a nationwide contest to find the best venture startup ideas in health IT. The the top 10 finalists will present their ideas at the Annual 2012 Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on October 10, 2012.
And speaking of Venture Capitalists, Mercom Capital Group has reported that healthcare IT VC funding raised $293 million in Q2 this year. “The strong uptrend that started in Q2 2011 has continued for four quarters in a row,” said Raj Prabhu, Managing Partner at Mercom Capital Group. “Also significant is the continued strong M&A activity in the sector, providing investors and companies with viable exit strategies.” Read more here.
InformationWeek reported this week that the American Medical Association (AMA) wants health insurers to standardize their doctor profiles and include clinical data from EHRs. According to the article the AMA has released guidelines to encourage health insurers to standardize their physician profiling reports. Read the full article here.
And finally, the Olympics isn’t the only news event from “across the pond.” BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and HIMSS have signed a long-term agreement to combine two of the UK′s major healthcare IT events — HC2013 and HEALTH+IN4MATICS. The combined event will be called: HC2013 and will be held on April 16-17, 2013 at the ICC Birmingham. Learn more about the event.