Industry experts are looking to the incoming 110th Congress to focus onhealthcare and pass health information technology legislation in 2007.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt last week called on employers throughout thenation to get behind efforts to make healthcare cost and care qualityinformation more openly available.

Of readers responding to least week’s poll, well below half (38.5percent) report that their cardiology department has integrated a PACSwith other department health IT systems.

The degree of adoption of electronic medical records by U.S. doctorsdepends on the practice size, according to a study conducted byreleased by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

According to last week’s reader poll, 60 percent of respondents reportusing PACS to manage their radiation oncology images and information.

Health IT vendor Cerner Corp. and Mortara Instrument, a non-invasivecardiology healthcare technology company, announced a joint engineeringeffort that will utilize the DICOM open standard to providefull-featured diagnostic capabilities within an electronic medicalrecord (EMR).

Siemens Medical Solutions emphasized the unification of both modalitiesand health IT systems within radiation oncology to bolster workflow andquality of care at the 48th Annual American Society of TherapeuticRadiology and Oncology (ASTRO) meeting in Philadelphia this week.

Acceletronics a U.S. provider of oncology equipment service anddistributor of new and pre-owned radiotherapy equipment, demonstratedthe TheraView Electronic Portal Imaging Device (EPID) at ASTRO.