Our Chief Experience Officer, Bennett Lauber will be presenting "EHR Usability, The future of medicine is easy to use" at the 3rd Annual OSEHR Conference on Sept 5th at 10:30 am.

OSEHRA, an emerging leader in advancing open source electronic health record software and related health information technology, is bringing together the best and brightest from healthcare and other open source initiatives to share their expertise in three key areas:

FDA issued draft guidance saying that it considers medical device data systems to be safe and does not intend to regulate such tools, FierceHealthIT reports (Bowman, FierceHealthIT, 6/20).

Jacob Reider, deputy national coordinator and chief medical officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, said that the agency wants to make the meaningful use program more flexible and less focused on providers meeting a specific set of clinical quality measures, Modern Healthcare reports.

National Nurses United has announced a campaign that aims to highlight the dangers of using "unproven" medical technology, Healthcare IT News reports.

The health care industry is divided over a proposed rule released earlier this week by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT that would give providers an additional year to upgrade electronic health record systems to meet reporting requirements for Stage 2 of the Medicare meaningful use program, Modern Healthcare 

In a nearly 1,700-page proposed rule on fiscal year 2015 inpatient payment policies released Wednesday, CMS appears to have quietly set Oct. 1, 2015, as the new ICD-10 implementation deadline, Health Data Management reports (Goedert, Health Data Management, 5/1).

In a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the American Hospital Association raised concerns about a proposed rule containing voluntary certification criteria for electronic health record systems in 2015, EHR Intelligence reports (Murphy, EHR Intelligence, 4/29).

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

Kaufman Hall, a provider of financial consulting services and software to health care organizations, has acquired Axiom EPM, a vendor of performance management software for the health care industry, for an undisclosed sum...Huron Consulting Group has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Vonlay, a health care technology consulting firm, for an undisclosed sum.

In a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, the Electronic Health Record Association raised concerns about a proposed rule containing voluntary certification criteria for electronic health record systems in 2015, EHR Intelligence re

Veterans' adoption of the Blue Button tool to access their health information through the Department of Veterans Affairs' personal health record portal is lagging, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, FierceEMR reports (Durben-Hirsch, FierceEMR, 4/23).

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

As of the end of February, 458,137 eligible hospitals and professionals were participating in the meaningful use program, officials said during a Health IT Policy Committee meeting last week, Government Health IT reports. 

Two thousand primary care surveyed EHR users narrowed down an elite group of systems vendors across eighteen probing key performance indicators from a field of over 400 qualified healthcare software firms. As thousands of primary care practices still scramble to select and implement records systems, current adopters identify the firms that delivered on implementation success, productivity, outcomes, connectivity, meaningful use achievement and crucial stimulus fund requirements.

Please join CMS and health care industry leaders to discuss important eHealth topics:

CMS has released updated specifications for electronic clinical quality measures used by eligible hospitals in 2014 under meaningful use Stage 2, as well as a new tool for measure developers, Health Data Managemen

An international group of medical device regulators and stakeholders released a draft framework designed to harmonize regulation of software as a medical device, or SaMD, Health Data Management reports.

Earlier this week, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society sent a letter  to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner with recommendations on how the agency can maximize the number of successful attesters to Stage 2 of the meaningful use program this year, FierceEMR reports.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT launched a Clinical Quality Framework initiative that will work to integrate guidelines for clinical decision support and electronic clinical quality measurement, according to a "Health IT Buzz" blog post by

On Friday, HHS released its fiscal years 2014-2018 strategic plan, which highlights the meaningful use of health IT as a way to improve population health and health care outcomes, Clinical Innovation & Technology reports.

An article supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) examines gaps in current electronic health record (EHR) functionality and needed enhancements to better support primary care. “Electronic health record functionality needed to better support primary care” recently appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.