Amy J. Maneker, MD, has been named CMIO for Akron Childrens Hospital in Akron, Ohio, effective Jan. 16.

The services and allowed charges by cardiologists for treating Medicare patients increased dramatically between 1999 and 2008, according to an analysis published online Jan. 10 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Much of the growth was linked to noninvasive imaging, with resting echocardiograms and nuclear stress testing fueling the lions share of growth.

Researchers investigating racial/ethnic disparities among patients receiving care that utilizes varying degrees of health IT determined healthier overall blood pressure regardless of race for those receiving care from providers using both EHRs and clinical decision support, according to a report published Jan. 9 by the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The pace of progress in developing interoperability between medical devices and data destinations is influenced as much by well-articulated demand as by technical capabilityand its up to CMIOs and other beneficiaries of such interoperability to push the issue, said Julian M. Goldman, MD, medical director of the biomedical engineering program at Partners HealthCare System in Boston.

All the same buzz words and terms that affect healthcare in general are impacting advanced visualization specifically. For example, more and more guidelines regarding specific uses of mobile technologies continue to come from regulatory agencies.

Privately insured statin users between 55 and 64 years old in the U.S. paid 400 percent higher costs for the drug than did their counterparts in the U.K. whose drugs were paid through the government, according to a study published in the January issue of the journal Pharmacotherapy. The authors found generics cost substantially less in both countries.

InterSystems informatics software platform, InterSystems HealthShare, has been selected as the technology platform for the Illinois Health Information Exchange (HIE), a contract with an estimated value of $7.25 million.

It's your last chance to participate in the 2012 CMIO Compensation Survey. The survey will close Jan. 6, at 12 pm EST.