News

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - The news wasn't a surprise. By the time it was confirmed, it had been rumored for months. Still, it was a sad day.

FRANKLIN, TN - It's been a busy summer on the transcription and speech recognition front. In one week this past month, two separate and significant mergers were announced. On Monday, July 11, MedQuist announced its acquisition of Pittsburgh-based M*Modal for $130 million. By that Thursday, the news was out that Burlington, Mass.-base Nuance's newest strategic buy was Atlanta-based Webmedx, which was acquired for an undisclosed sum.

ATLANTA - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBSGa) has launched an emergency room education campaign, incorporating Google Maps to make it easier for consumers to find and use retail health clinics and urgent care centers for non-emergency conditions.

CAMBRIDGE, MA - Busy physicians may not always have every answer at their fingertips, but if they have a smartphone, help isn't that far away. Sermo, a Cambridge, Mass.-based online physician network, is giving clinical decision support a mobile platform with the launch of Sermo Mobile, an application designed to give its members immediate access to the company's so-called "virtual water cooler" that connects more than 120,000 physicians in 68 specialties in all 50 states.

FALLS CHURCH, VA - A Virginia-based, seven-hospital healthcare system with ties to Washington D.C. is getting some financial help for its fledgling telehealth program.

Any mass casualty event, from a traffic accident to a plane crash to a structure fire, usually causes chaos among patients and responders. Two healthcare IT companies are looking to ease that confusion with a joint tracking solution designed to guide patient and provider from triage through hospital admission and discharge.

Hennepin County Medical Center, a 477-bed hospital in downtown Minneapolis, is ready to display its meaningful use readiness to the world. And Chief Medical Information Officer Kevin Larson says the hospital wouldn't be ready if it hadn't embraced mobile health."We have to break through this tyranny of everyone has to come to our door to get care," he said, pointing out that the hospital is deploying laptops with full-function electronic health records and will soon be deploying its own smartphone apps for physicians and other staff.