Telemonitoring of heart failure patients did not improve outcomes and researchers say the results indicate the importance of a thorough, independent evaluation of disease-management strategies before their adoption, according to the Tele-HF study reported at the American Heart Association (AHA) conference in Chicago this week, and simultaneously published online Nov. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Agency for Health Research and Qualitys 2010 Preliminary Comparative Results: Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture shows that 50 percent or more of practices have encountered problems when exchanging accurate, complete and timely information with other entities during the past year.

Intensive surveillance of women with a genetic predisposition for breast cancer that includes MRI can detect breast cancer at an early stage, while women carrying the BRCA1 mutation have poorer screening results and may require tailored screening, prevention and treatment protocols, according to a Dutch study published online Nov. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Integration and interoperability developments of all stripes have come to the fore recently, so lets take a look at some of the news in connectivity during the past month.

CareGroup Healthcare System, a Boston-based integrated healthcare delivery network that includes Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and three other area hospitals, decided to replace its legacy data integration engine platform with the InterSystems Ensemble application integration and development platform.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has announced the company is entering the healthcare market with identity management and data analytics products to help healthcare payors ensure appropriate access to personal health information and mitigate fraud.

The U.S. handheld ultrasound market is expected to exceed $1.2 billion by 2016, sparked by technological advances in size, imaging quality, ultrasound depth and improvements in both 3D and 4D capabilities, according to marketing research group iData.

Provisions of new federal healthcare reforms will move the country toward a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model, but the nation may not have enough primary care doctors to handle the workload, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System published online ahead of print in the journal Medical Care.