ORLANDO, Fla. -- Since healthcare delivery is fragmented, chaotic and too expensive, taming the chaos will require a new breed of leaders at every level, as well as a more uniform, systematic approach to providing patient care, said Nate Kaufman, during his keynote address of the CIO Forum, hosted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, in conjunction with HIMSS11. However, accountable care organizations, if they are to come to fruition, will first start with clinical integration.

ORLANDO, FLA.--Gretchen E. Tegethoff, CIO and director of IT at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., told CMIO about how federal health IT initiatives have influenced the provider setting, as well as how the workforce shortage for health IT professionals could impact the current momentum, at the 2011 HIMSS conference. Also, she spoke to how the role of the CMIO is evolving in clinical practice.

ORLANDO, FLA.--Timothy D. Stettheimer, PhD, senior vice president and regional CIO at St. Vincents Health System/Ascension Health in Birmingham, Ala., elucidated how his provider's health IT initiatives are seeking to implement evidence-based medicine strategies and improve quality at the 2011 HIMSS annual conference. Additionally, he spoke about the evolving role of the CMIO in the contemporary healthcare environment.

CriticalKey (Booth 2387) is releasing its KeyEngine 2.0 technology for hospitals, a platform to electronically broker orders, distribute results and insert electronic results into a referring physicians EMR during the 2011 HIMSS convention Feb. 20 to 24 in Orlando, Fla.

ORLANDO, Fla.--How physicians and researchers make genomic and molecular data available to stratify patient populations based on various criteria (such as the diagnosis of a patients stage of cancer) may be able to help clinicians group patients to determine best practices for clinical decision support (CDS), said David Fenstermacher, PhD, chair of the department of biomedical informatics at the Moffitt Cancer Center, at a Feb. 22 educational session on personalized health and genomics at HIMSS11.

CareSpark, a nonprofit regional health information exchange (HIE), and MobileMD, (Booth 6746) an HIE service developer, are demonstrating Direct Project interoperability at the upcoming 2011 Annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference & Exhibition, Feb. 21 to 24, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.

PACSGear, a developer of imaging connectivity for EHRs, has relocated its main office.

McKesson has reported a double-digit drop in net income for the 2010 third quarter, which ended Dec. 31, 2010, compared with previous-year's third quarter, which was greatly affected by a litigation charge.