Research

According to a new report from the Austin, Texas-based software buying consulting firm, Software Advice, 21.89 percent of all meaningful use attestations for a complete EHR through October 2012 were done using a product from Epic Systems Corporation (Verona, Wisc.). The report says that in total Epic has 23,446 complete EHR meaningful use attestations, nearly doubling the next closest vendor, Allscripts (Chicago), which has 12,741.

Backed by a study from the Office for the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC), researchers at the Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System and the National Organization for Research at the University of Chicago (NORC) recently discovered that patients can help make the information in their EHR more accurate. These results were touted in a recent webinar from the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC).

According to a new report from the Washington, D.C.-based mHealth Alliance, countries in sub-Saharan Africa have the highest number of mobile health (mHealth) projects when compared to similar low and middle income countries (LMICs). Researchers of the report looked at the adoption, implementation, funding, and impact of mHealth in LMICs in Asia and Latin America.

On the heels of a Jan. 15 report by Pew Research Center revealing that 35 percent of Americans use the internet to figure out a medical condition, an independent survey conducted by medical marketing firm Vanguard Communications found that only one-third of physicians in three American cities offer direct website help to healthcare consumers trying to understand their symptoms.

Recently, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) announced they are teaming up to improve data collection in electronic health records (EHRs) through a set of standardized data elements and definitions for the clinical management of patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) and coronary artery disease (CAD).