health care - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Why Healthcare Needs Amazon (or Anyone) to Shake Things Up

  As healthcare in the United States embarks on what PwC describes as its most radical shift in 80 years, most health IT incumbents just aren't cutting it.

• Forrester Outlines IT Imperatives for Healthcare Providers

  Healthcare providers such hospitals, medical offices and clinics face an unsettling reality, according to a recent Forrester report: Embrace the cloud, big data, mobile and other emerging technology or get acquired by a healthcare organization that's successfully been there and done that.

• Will Healthcare Ever Take IT Security Seriously?

  A recent threat intelligence study reports widespread security vulnerabilities in healthcare organizations, many of which went unnoticed for months. In December, a developer pulled unencrypted data from a 'certified' mobile health app in less than a minute. Why is it so hard for healthcare to get security right?

• Top tech stories of 2013: Big Brother, wearables, and the struggles of aging tech giants

  Politics collided with the world of technology this year as stories about U.S. government spying stirred angst both among the country's citizens and foreign governments, and the flawed HeathCare.gov site got American health-care reform off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, the post-PC era put aging tech giants under pressure to reinvent themselves. Here in no particular order are IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.

• Fixing Healthcare Requires Netflix-Like Disruption

  Healthcare is broken. No one disputes that. No one lacks perspective on how to fix it, either. The challenge, though, is disrupting a system that makes more money treating sickness than it does preventing it. Technology and innovation can play a part, but so can flipping the entire care model on its head.

• HealthCare.gov's problems: What we know so far

  More than a month after it went live, a couple of large questions remain about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' botched launch of HealthCare.gov.

• What's Wrong With Healthcare.gov's Price Estimator

  In the early days of Healthcare.gov, I praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for publishing a dataset with sample rates for every health plan participating in the federal health insurance marketplace.

• Hospital CIO Leads Effort To Train Veterans For IT Jobs

  An innovative program at Rush University Medical Center will support returning veterans by helping them find careers in the IT field.

• Will Government Shutdown Boost Private IT Hiring?

  With the government closed for business, private-sector firms should consider poaching public-sector IT talent to fill open tech positions.

• Can BYOD and Smartphones Move Clinical Trials Forward?

  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.

• Mobile, Modular EHR Help eClinicalWorks Put Patients First

  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.

• 7 Healthcare IT Roles That Are Transforming Tech Careers

  Healthcare IT is becoming one of the fastest growing areas in the job market as health service providers rush to get compliant and adopt new technologies.

• How big data will save your life

  Dr. Robert Walker, director of health innovation for the U.S. Army Surgeon General, has been more a frustrated data entry clerk in recent years than a physician, a frustration shared by thousands of his colleagues.

• 12 Ways to Improve the Healthcare User Experience

  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.

• Health-IT early adopters well-poised for big-data advances in clinical medicine

  Nearly a decade after research firms predicted major cost savings and clinical benefits from the use of health-IT, adoption rates among U.S. medical providers remain sluggish, with the industry slow to embrace the big-data movement.