St. Jude Medical has reported a 1 percent increase in sales, but an overall $21 million decrease in net earnings for the first quarter of 2012, which ended March 31.

It seems you cant turn around without being asked to link one platform of your digital life to another platform. Whether its needing a Facebook account to join Spotify, allowing Twitter to post notifications through an iPhone or going through an Outlook website portal to access your professional email off-site, theres a lot of personal data being thrown around out there.

The percentage of doctors using electronic records has doubled in the last two years, said Doug Fridsma, MD, director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), at the ICD-10 Summit sponsored by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

More than half of U.S. healthcare providers consider EMR integration a key factor in selecting smart-pump vendors and productsbut the number of providers who are actually integrating their smart pumps is in the single digits.

The role of privacy officer has changed since it was mandated in 2003 by HIPAA. New regulations, technology and data-sharing initiatives have reshaped the landscape, according to Chris Dimick, staff writer for Journal of AHIMA, who outlined the new role of the privacy officer in the April edition.

Royal Philips Electronics and Brainlab have formed a collaboration to develop an intra-operative system with the goal of streamlining neurosurgery procedures.

A CMIOs effectiveness will be dependent on the quality of their partnerships with CMOs, CEOs, CIOs and other executives, while reporting structures are of secondary importance and should be determined by the particulars of organizations and objectives for the CMIO, according to a perspective paper from the Advisory Board.

A majority of young physicians are pessimistic about the future of the U.S. healthcare system, with concerns about healthcare reform and declining reimbursement the main sources of the gloomy outlook, according to an online survey commissioned by The Physicians Foundation.