Coming up with a standard radiology terminology is the seeminglyHerculean task of RadLex, a lexicon for the uniform indexing andretrieval of radiology information resources. The effort formally beganin 2005 with the formation of six committees formed in collaborationwith more than 30 radiology professional and standards organizations.

Harris Corporation has created a Healthcare Solutionsbusiness to transplant proprietary IT capabilities, including imagingand digital content management, into healthcare.

State and local governments' investments in Medicaid Management Information Systems as well as health IT innovation, will drive vertical growth for health IT spending from $6.9 billion in 2007 to $10.8 billion in 2012, according to a December 2007 report published by market research firm Input. 

As states across the U.S. move closer to better and more widely usedEHRs, doctors who provide the bulk of healthcare in the country—primarycare physicians—are being lost in the shuffle, according to doctorsaffiliated with the American Academy of Family Physicians.

New Jersey is poised to become the first state to mandate a move towardEHR under a bill now before Governor Jon Corzine called the New JerseyHealth Information Technology Promotion Act.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has improved its quality ofhealthcare through management initiatives and use of health IT,according to an interim report from the Congressional Budget Office(CBO).

In late December, President George W. Bush signed a new spending bill that leavesthe Office of the National Coordinator for Health InformationTechnology (ONCHIT) with the same budget for the current fiscal year as2007—a total of $61.3 million.

Framing communication to emphasize the personal benefits of EHRs tousers is likely to increase their purchase and use by early adopters oftechnological innovations, according to a new study to be published inan upcoming issue of Health Communication.