Many hospitals are considering new vendor-neutral solutions for archiving and accessing medical images to avoid being locked into closed, proprietary software, according to a report from market research firm KLAS.

Health IT systems developer QuadraMed has appointed Duncan W. James as its CEO and a member of the board of directors.

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) published its vision for U.S. healthcare reform, describing both existing initiatives and plans for the future, and called for cardiologists to play an active role in shaping healthcare reform, in the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The RAND Corporation has linked the rapid growth in U.S. healthcare costs with job losses and lower output among industries that commonly provide workers with health insurance, according to a study published online July 13 in Health Services Research.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has reported that VistA Imaging, the medical and healthcare imaging system used in VA medical centers, attained more than one billion stored images in January.

Abbott today settled all outstanding intellectual property litigation with Medtronic. Under the terms of the settlement, Medtronic will pay Abbott $400 million and $42 million to evYsio Medical Devices, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Researchers at the University of Alberta's Cross Cancer Institute are developing a new technology that integrates linear accelerators, or linacs, and MRI systems. The group will discuss their findings at the 2009 American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), which takes place this week in Anaheim, Calif.

The eHealth Initiative tracked the successes and failures of U.S. organizations that were working on a health information exchange (HIE), and found that 150 initiatives responded to and qualified for inclusion in 2009.