The Aetna Foundation announced a digital health innovation challenge to develop programs geared to underserved communities struggling to manage chronic conditions. The competition is open to non-profits, community organizations, state and local government agencies.

JDRF and the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto announced publication of interoperability standards for diabetes devices. The work is the result of  JDRF Canadian Clinical Trial Network (JDRF CCTN) funding to Dr. Joseph Cafazzo at UHN to pilot the development of standard communication protocols that define how diabetes devices, such as insulin pumps, blood glucose meters, and continuous glucose monitors, communicate with one another and with other devices.

Online self-scheduling of physician appointments has the potential to save $3.2 billion, according to a report from Accenture.

The Health IT Policy Committee formally endorsed interoperability roadmap recommendations during its Dec. 9 meeting.

Mobile communications giant Blackberry and NantHealth, a cloud-based IT vendor, have unveiled a clinical genome browser that gives physicians access to patients’ genetic data on the BlackBerry Passport smartphone.

The Institute of Medicine report on patient errors sparked the start of patient safety and led hospitals to start thinking about how to improve, said Tejal Ghandhi, MD, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation, speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s forum on innovation and patient safety.

Healthcare organizations that have yet to implement a patient portal can learn from the experience of numerous other organizations, including two that were part of a recent webinar.

BOCA RATON, Fla.--Modernizing Medicine, Inc., creator of the Electronic Medical Assistant® (EMA™), a cloud-based, specialty-specific electronic medical record (EMR) system, announced today that it has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Innovation Award by the Association of University Research Parks (AURP).