The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending that theDepartment of Health and Human Services (HHS) develop a detailedimplementation strategy for meeting President George W. Bush’s goal ofinteroperable EHR systems by 2014.

Members of Congress and other government officials converged on thenation’s capitol last week to call for the swift passage of legislationthat would help facilitate the adoption healthcare IT and to discusspatient privacy concerns for secure healthcare IT.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is preparing aprogram to assist Medicaid agencies and State Children’s HealthInsurance Programs (SCHIP) in adopting IT and joining healthinformation exchanges.

Northrop Grumman has appointed George Peach Taylor Jr., MD, vicepresident for the IT sector's health and human services division.

Of late, grail quests have seized popular attention, as is witnessed bythe success of such works as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Medicalinformatics in the United States is also engaged in its own grail-likequest, the development of a national health information network (NHIN).However, unlike the search for a mythical object, an NHIN may well bean attainable goal.

Data security is perhaps the top issue in the minds of the generalpublic when it comes to the implementation and deployment of electronicmedical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) systems.Unauthorized access and disclosure of privileged health information ispreeminent in their concerns about the adoption of this technology, aswell as the alteration of healthcare data with malicious intent.

Medical databases across disparate environments often resemble theaftermath of the construction of the Tower of Babel. That is, eachdatabase contains information that is accessible only to its users andis gibberish to users outside the immediate system.

TechniScan Medical Systems, a developer of ultrasound technologyfor breast imaging, has closed its Series E Preferred Funding round ata total of $13 million.