RIS and PACS vendors saw it coming a long time ago, a need to make data repositories work with IT the systems that drive workflow. The hybridization of RIS and PACS, preceded by interfaces that allowed the transfer of data between and among systems by different vendors, blazed a trail toward interoperability. This trail has now fanning out to super highway status to accommodate the spread of companies seeking to provide answers to IT questions that must be answered if the Obama initiative is to improve the efficiency of U.S. healthcare.

The HIMSS 09 exhibit floor opened Sunday as thousands of IT enthusiasts descended on McCormick Place in Chicago. Mammoth exhibit halls packed in November with imaging equipment played host to myriad information technologies, some focused on the core of healthcare IT – switching, translating and archiving packets of data; others addressing the consequences of IT adoption.

One of the healthcare industry’s most innovative meetings took place in San Diego in February: the Health Information and Management Systems Society annual meeting and exhibition. This year’s HIMSS meeting attracted 25,740 attendees, including staff for 895 exhibitors. More healthcare chief information, technology, and operations officers as well as senior IT managers assemble at this conference than any other gathering in the world.

Attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting had four days to experience a Regional Health Information Organization in action at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise Interoperability Showcase. By improving the state of system integration, the IHE aims to make information readily available wherever it is needed and to remove barriers to optimal patient care.

An insider’s view of the world’s largest integrated delivery network can be had for the price of admission this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting in San Diego. The Department of Defense exhibit at HIMSS showcases the healthcare IT programs that consolidate and manage an IDN comprising 70 hospitals, 800 clinics, 60,000 medical professionals, and more than nine million patients.

Improving informed consent is a $4.3 billion challenge that could be met if more facilities used their digital systems to automate the process, a pair of presenters said Tuesday at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting in San Diego.

Three months after Hurricane Katrina devastated its city, the radiology department at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, School of Medicine at New Orleans passed along valuable lessons about PACS disaster recovery during a Hot Topic presentation Tuesday at the RSNA meeting.

As computer-aided detection continues to make inroads into virtual colonoscopy territory, studies presented Tuesday at the RSNA meeting highlighted its potential for spotting polyps.

Health information technology is not just about wired physicians or better treatment for patients, said Dr. David Brailer, the first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, at the HIMSS meeting’s closing session. It’s about treating the healthcare industry itself.

The push toward patient safety and technology effectiveness has begun to loosen the traditional boundaries between the worlds of information technology and clinical engineering.

In this era of robust information technology, systems should be improved to address the problems of human error in healthcare delivery, according to a participant in an e-session at the HIMSS meeting Wednesday. At the same time, solutions must be found for the critical problems of productivity in hospitals.

Certification of information technology products moved to the front burner last year, with the formation of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) dedicated to establishing a product certification process.

The electronic medical record provides an automated way to deal with the added complexity evaluators face as they attempt to measure not only what today’s medical residents know, but also how well they perform using that knowledge.

Today's technology makes it possible for increasingly large networks to share medical information, and HIMSS attendees received an inside look at one Tuesday: a regional collaborative initiative operated by the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium. The initiative promotes the interorganizational exchange of healthcare data using information technology, standards, and administrative simplification. The role of the collaborative is to deliver the goal in seven to 10 years.

In an update to its Composite HealthCare System patient record, the Department of Defense Military Health System has moved away from an institution-centered electronic medical record and toward a more centralized model that focuses on the patient.

If healthcare is willing to change its process and organization, the future can be exciting, Cisco president and CEO John Chambers told a keynote audience at the HIMSS meeting Tuesday morning.

Regional health information organizations are popping up across the country in response to the “Framework for strategic action,” published by Dr. David Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services.

Hype took center stage in an education session at the HIMSS meeting, “Hype aside, what’s really happening in U.S. healthcare IT?”

In its second survey of data warehouse use in healthcare organizations, the HIMSS Data Warehouse and Data Mining Special Interest Group reports that hospitals are branching out in the ways they use data repositories to improve their business operations.

Finding success in the world of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is much easier with the System Development Life Cycle to guide the implementation process, according to an e-session presented at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting taking place in Dallas this week.