Janet Dillione

It's astounding to me how impressive the healthcare system can be one minute and how downright terrifying it can appear the next. Lives are on the line every second of every day in healthcare and still, despite its larger than life responsibility and mission, the healthcare industry struggles to achieve...

We did it. Another year of HIMSS, the largest, annual health care IT conference, has gone by and as one of my colleagues let me know, it's just 370 some-odd days away from HIMSS 2013. In general, the show was fantastic. People (healthcare CIOs, CMIOs, CNOs, physicians, etc.) more so...

The adoption of healthcare IT as a means to improve clinical workflow processes and ultimately to improve the delivery of patient care has accelerated. I believe 2012 will be a substantial year for HIT progress on the adoption front, as well as on the innovation front -- particularly as it...

Health care is complex. When a patient goes into a doctor's office or hospital the process only just begins. In the most simplistic view, symptoms are presented, care is provided and a bill is paid. But what patients don't always realize is the complexity of healthcare reimbursement.

Healthcare reimbursement affects...

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the eighth annual Connected Health Symposium, an event that brought more than 1,000 healthcare executives, physicians, nurses and IT experts together to discuss the impact of technology on healthcare today and the future of healthcare innovation. What an exciting and...

Perhaps you've heard that the IBM/"Jeopardy!" challenge (man vs. machine) will re-air on September 12, 13 and 14. If you missed it earlier in the year, you won't want to again. It's fascinating how IBM's "Watson" computing system can out-trivia Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, all-time "Jeopardy!" champions....

Two weeks ago, there was a study published in JAMA, led by Harvey J. Murff and colleagues that validates natural language processing (NLP) technologies as a powerful tool to unlock data (meaning) from electronic health records (EHRs). However, the use of language understanding technologies, such as NLP, in...

"First, do no harm" is a fundamental precept to medical ethics and a guiding light for the delivery of care. Physicians take on the laudable act of healing -- a superhuman undertaking that unfortunately cannot be done with a wand or wiggle of the nose.

The work of doctors is...

As patients, we must be attuned to how the digitization of medical records impacts us.

Copy-and-paste, templates, macros, checked-boxes and other documentation shortcuts can provide valuable efficiency to doctors and nurses alike. But when it comes to patients' medical records, there is a fine line between convenience, comprehensiveness and risk.

Last month, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) asked Congress to require prior authorization for doctors who order many diagnostic imaging scans. With prior authorization, doctors would need to first verify the legitimacy of the scans they'd like to run on patients before ordering them.

This request comes...

On the one-year anniversary of the ARRA's HITECH provision, we need to remember that exceptional use of electronic health records, not just "meaningful use," is the ultimate goal.

Here we are, February 17, 2010, the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's landmark American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), aimed to...