Imprivata Healthcare News Watch 3/20/13

We are proud and impressed by all the loyal Bostonians that went out to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade this past weekend, despite the New England temperatures! While many of us are recovering from seeing too much green this weekend and snow yesterday, here is some health IT news that we at Imprivata think are important.

This week, we are reading about free Q&A services with doctors, a common ground for sharing medical data and the need for more analytics for ACO’s.

What are you reading today?

HealthTap's Q&A Service Sees 7.5M Uniques Per Month, With MDs Spending An Hour Per Session Providing 581M Answers, TechCrunch - In 2010, Wellsphere's Ron Gutman founded HealthTap to leverage the scalable distribution afforded by the web to connect you with real, live human doctors in realtime — for free. The founder tells us that people are now asking doctors more than 10 million questions on HealthTap every month and that the site is serving more than 7.5 million unique visitors each month, with its mobile apps having been downloaded by more than 2 million.Thanks to its Q&A network, which provides patients with near-same-day answers to their health questions, the start-up has been growing fast with doctors spending over an hour per session and engaging in peer reviews of other doctors answers.

EMRs Must Work Together for ARRA to Succeed, Internet Evolution - Health information technology is far from a new concept. The first EKG machine, used by Alexander Muirhead in 1872, was designed to bring better medical solutions to ailing patients through technology. Today, technology and medicine are almost inseparable. Machines provide comprehensive data throughout the diagnostic path. Magnetic resonance imaging is an excellent example of the type of analysis that could not be completed without very powerful computers. Yet most of this industry has yet to achieve full electronic sharing of data between patients, primary care physicians, referring physicians, pharmacists, and laboratories.

Analytics Tops on ACOs' 2013 Investment Wish Lists, FierceHealthIT - New analytics capabilities top the investment goals for accountable care organizations, according to a new report from IDC Health Insights. "While still behind the curve, healthcare organizations have recognized the pivotal role that data plays in the success of accountable care," an announcement touting the report said. The report is based on a survey of 40 hospitals and 30 insurers, according to Health Data Management.