The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has organized a workgroup (subcommittee), called the Privacy & Security Tiger Team, under the HIT Policy Committee to move forward on various privacy and security issues.

Despite the innovations and the possibilities within healthcare reform, there is a culture gap within health IT today between consumers and the U.S. government, said Secretary Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer (CTO) and associate director for technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy, during his keynote address at the Health Information and Management Systems Societys (HIMSS) annual Virtual Conference and Expo this week.

The Commonwealth of Virginia responded this week to the federal governments attempt to dismiss the states lawsuit against the new federal healthcare law in an attempt to move the case of Commonwealth of Virginia v. Kathleen Sebelius forward. Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli now awaits the July 1 court date that will determine whether his case has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the healthcare reform bill under the Commerce Clause.

The only alternatives to the federal healthcare reform that would have covered more Americans at a lower cost to the federal government were politically untenable, and would have included substantially higher penalties for those who don't comply with mandates, lower government subsidies and less-generous Medicaid expansion, according to research published in the June edition of Health Affairs.

The journey to create a certification exam to evaluate imaging informatics professionals has taken several years and hundreds of volunteer hours. The process, both slow and deliberate, involved practicing informaticists closely scrutinizing the results of each test to ensure the societies are providing a useful instrument for professionals to improve their careers, according to a review in this months issue of the Journal of Digital Imaging.

MINNEAPOLIS--Sorna showcased new components to Reviewer CD software during the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) annual meeting last week.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki has launched the Industry Innovation Competition by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), making available $80 million for private sector innovations.

Genetics education and training efforts in the private and public sectors have increased but these efforts have not kept pace with the emerging understanding of the human genome and rapid evolution of genomic technologies, according to a draft report from the Secretarys Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACGHS) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).