Brian T. Horowitz

Biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has launched a unified communications (UC) pilot project using Microsoft Lync to enhance collaboration among sales team members, doctors and external drug researchers. Lync allows workers to conduct voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone calls and keep track of contacts’ availability, as well as participate in videoconferences, instant messaging and Web conferencing. Lync is available […]

Data-visibility vendor Intelleflex has introduced a new GPS-enabled RFID reader and cloud database to monitor the temperature of medication and food throughout the supply chain. Launched on April 3, the CMR-6100 cellular multiprotocol reader and Zest Data Services cloud platform enables manufacturers and health care providers to safeguard food and pharmaceutical items from spoilage and […]

Health information exchanges are beneficial for the continuity of care, but they require privacy and security strategies as well as an effective financial plan to survive, according to an April 2 report by research firm IDC Health Insights. In the report, “Best Practices: Establishing Sustainable Health Information Exchange,” IDC interviewed about 45 executives from organizations […]

With Amazon Web Services able to host 200 terabytes of genetic data in the cloud, medical researchers hope to spot the sequences leading to illnesses such as breast cancer and Parkinson’s disease. At a White House Big Data Summit on March 29, Amazon and the National Institutes of Health announced that they will make the […]

In its ongoing effort to boost its health care portfolio, Oracle is acquiring ClearTrial, a provider of cloud clinical trial software. The deal gives Oracle a new portfolio of applications designed to help manage the long, often-costly research process involved in the development of new prescription drugs. The enterprise software giant will combine ClearTrial’s platform […]

As the Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s health care reform, software as a service (SaaS) provider Castlight Health launched a mobile version of its personalized health care shopping tool for Apple iOS and Google Android devices. The company also offers a mobile Web version optimized for RIM BlackBerry smartphones. Launched March […]

Smart cards, which are used for everything from health insurance to national identification cards, are poised for big growth, according to a new report by ABI Research. The March 22 report, “Smart Cards in Government and Healthcare Citizen ID,” concludes that the smart card market will peak in 2014 and then level off at close […]

The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing in on the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called Obamacare, and a ruling could affect the development of health insurance exchanges (HIXes), the Web health plan marketplaces that resemble an Expedia or Travelocity. At issue is whether the Obama administration overstepped itself in passing the 2010 Patient […]

IBM Watson, the physician’s assistant, has another gig in cancer care. Big Blue and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the world’s oldest and largest cancer center, have announced plans to use the Watson supercomputer to develop a decision-support application for cancer treatment. The arrangement will combine Watson’s computational and natural-language processing abilities with the clinical knowledge […]

The research division of electronic health record (EHR) vendor Practice Fusion launched a new Web database March 20 that allows researchers to uncover patterns in public health. Researchers will analyze big data to study adverse health conditions and adverse drug reactions, according to the company. “Big data holds the key to understanding health care today […]

Although health care organizations are making progress in digitizing medical information, patients need more control over their data, and Web portals are necessary to accomplish this control, according to a new report announced on March 6. The study was commissioned by the Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. Robert Miller, adjunct professor of health economics […]

The Federal Health Architecture in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced version 3.3 of Connect, the open-source gateway software that allows health care IT developers to create health information exchanges. Operating in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, within HHS, the FHA manages health IT among 20 federal […]