Stories by Brian Eastwood

If any industry's ready to reap the benefits of analyzing reams of data from disparate sources, it's healthcare. But just because there's a will doesn't necessarily mean there's an easy way.

Strip away preconceptions about why technology doesn't or shouldn't work and people are likely to embrace the change that tech brings. That's what electronic health record and practice management software vendor athenahealth learned when it helped a hospital in Haiti implement a cloud-based EHR system.

The big data market is expected, by one estimate, to grow more than 30 percent annually until the end of the decade. But more than half of big data projects fail--and even those that do succeed can fall apart if the findings aren't applied to operational efficiencies. Ron Bodkin, CEO of Think Big Analytics, offers advice to help you prevent your business from becoming just another statistic.

The majority of today's clinical trials use paper surveys or single-purpose handheld devices to gather patient data. Web forms improve this process, but the smartphone could be a leap forward for the 'BYOD clinical trial'--if a notably risk-averse industry is willing to embrace the change.

The U.S. government is giving the healthcare industry billions of dollars in incentives to use electronic health records. Most organizations have EHR software in place, but as many as 35 percent wish they could switch systems. Are EHR vendors to blame, or are deeper forces at work?

The phrase 'don't boil the ocean' is often used to describe efforts to introduce IT to healthcare organizations. These 11 tips will help healthcare CIOs make incremental changes that improve business practices without panicking end users.

In an increasingly complex IT landscape, leading CIOs seek novel ways to use big data and cloud services to improve business processes. Keeping data secure remains a challenge, though, as does finding the right people to manage it all.

Healthcare is rapidly moving toward a patient-centric care model, says Girish Kumar Navani, CEO of electronic health record software vendor eClinicalWorks. To meet this demand, EHR systems ought to be mobile, modular and easy to use, he tells CIO.com. Patients, meanwhile, need an experience that reminds them of online banking.

Thanks to government incentives, more healthcare organizations in the United States are implementing Electronic Health Record systems than ever before. But EHR implementation isn't the same as EHR adoption, which requires significant investment in planning, training and personnel.

The cost of mapping an individual genome is quickly dropping. The potential benefits for improving the care individual patients as well as entire populations are immense. So, too, are the obstacles to getting all stakeholders--healthcare providers, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and the patients themselves--to share what they've learned.

Making use of the petabytes of patient data that healthcare organizations possess requires extracting it from legacy systems, normalizing it and then building applications that can make sense of it. That's a tall order, but the facilities that pull it off can learn a lot.

This year's Health Information and Managements Systems Society's HIMSS13 conference began with a shocker: The announcement that five leading electronic health record (EHR) vendors were forming a group called the CommonWell Health Alliance that would promote "seamless interoperability" of healthcare data.

Technology is a great way to engage patients in managing their health, but poor design--whether it's a bad interface or an app that doesn't meet patients' needs--often stands in the way. These 12 tips will help designers and developers improve the user experience for patients who want to improve their health.

Efforts to expedite the adoption of health information exchange in the United States face a bevy of technology, management and financial questions. There are no easy answers, since HIE organizations are as different as the regions, the populations and the healthcare providers they represent. But there are some lessons to be learned.

Healthcare reform, technology and Capitol Hill legislation with bipartisan support all point to a bright future for telemedicine. In fact, this may be the year that telemedicine gains widespread adoption.