In 2003, Kaiser Permanente developed a vision called Blue Sky—by 2015,home would be the hub of care, said Naomi Fried, PhD, director ofinnovation and advanced technology for Kaiser.

Healthcare information technology provider Argole Systems of Rockville,Md., has released a free beta version of Akessa Oncology, the firstoffering of its Akessa electronic medical record (EMR) and practiceworkflow suite.

Healthcare enterprise applications developer Initiate Systems haslaunched its Initiate Provider and Initiate Patient applications, bothmaster data management tools, according to the Chicago-based firm.

Medsphere Systems, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based developer of EMRsystems and Keane, a San Ramon, Calif.-based developer of revenue-cyclemanagement software, have formed a strategic partnership to providehealthcare enterprises with integrated clinical and financial software.

Philips Medical Systems introduced CliniScape, a new mobile clinicalassistant (MCA) device, at the World of Health IT annual congress inVienna, Austria, this week.

IBM and Initiate Systems reported that Ochsner Health System hasselected the firms to improve the capabilities of its electronicmedical record (EMR) system.

A mix of lawmakers, corporations and activists met Friday to urgeCongress to protect the privacy of patients’ electronic healthinformation, which activists from the Coalition for Patient Privacy sayare “vulnerable and exposed.”

athenahealth, a provider of internet-based business services forphysician practices, and Humana have developed and launched the anall-payor platform that enables real-time adjudication (RTA) of medicalclaims at the point-of-service for payors.