Agfa-Gevaert of Belgium today announced its second quarter 2006 resultsand detailed its plan to reduce costs annually by approximately $320million on a worldwide basis.

Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp) has reached the over 1,000 mark withhealthcare center deployments of its storage systems for digitalrecords and archiving.

President Bush on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed an enablingpatients to have more information regarding cost and quality of theirhealthcare, the Associated Press reports.

A new study indicates that most patients in the United States view thehealthcare they receive as generally lacking, according to a new surveyfrom The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance HealthSystem, which found 42 percent of respondents reporting that the carethey received is lacking.

In late July the U.S. House of Representatives passed a health IT bill(H.R. 4157) that would seek to promote technology adoption inhealthcare — such as electronic medical records and other systems — toimprove care, reduce medical errors, and ease the exchange of essentialhealth information.

Sage Software last week announced plans to purchase Emdeon Practice Services (EPS), based in Tampa, Fla., from Emdeon Inc. for approximately $565 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed in September.

State and local government spending on healthcare and welfare IT shouldincrease from $7.6 billion currently to $12.2 billion by fiscal year2011, according to a report from Input, a research firm devoted toanalysis of governmental business.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt Wednesday announced final regulations thatwill support physician adoption of electronic prescribing andelectronic health records technology.