The new Virtual Research Data Center is a secure and efficient means for researchers to virtually access and analyze the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services' healthcare data.

ECRI Institute, a nonprofit that researches the best approaches to patient care, announces a new agreement with Data Leverage Group, which specializes in value analysis workflow solutions for hospitals and health systems.

The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety named 1,099 hospitals as achieving a spot on its Top Performer on Key Quality Measures program. These hospitals represent 33 percent of all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals reporting accountability measure performance data for 2012, and include general, children’s, psychiatric, surgical specialty and critical access hospitals, according to the 60-page report.

BOSTON—“I don’t think big data has generated a big return on investment for sick or healthy people,” said Chris Kryder, MD, MBA, chairman of Valence Health, speaking during a panel discussion about big data’s impact on healthcare at Partners HealthCare’s 10th Annual Connected Health Symposium.

ECRI Institute’s Patient Safety Organization (PSO) announced the release of a health IT hazard reporting system that utilizes the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's common formats and a tested standardized taxonomy for health IT hazard information.

The National Science Foundation awarded three Texas universities a cumulative $892,587 to develop an EHR data mining framework to conduct risk stratification for personalized intervention.

Vanderbilt University Hospital is testing a new computer program designed to estimate patients' risk of returning within 30 days.

Healthcare organizations lag behind payers in adopting big data and analytics technology, according to research published by IDC Health Insights, a research firm based in Framingham, Mass.