The Federal Trade Commission has filed a proposed order settling charges that e-prescribing giant Surescripts used anticompetitive business practices to monopolize two e-prescription drug markets. The order follows on the heels of a prior federal…

Online mental provider Cerebral, Inc. has admitted that it inappropriately shared private health data on 3.1 million of its users, a problem that arose from its use of pixel-based tracking technologies which gather and share data on people who visit…

The Federal Trade Commission has taken steps to sanction online counseling service BetterHelp, Inc. which it says shared sensitive healthcare data inappropriately. This is the latest move by the FTC to crack down on healthcare organizations that…

The Federal Trade Commission has cited telehealth and prescription drug discount provider GoodRx for sharing sensitive consumer health data with several advertising platforms, in violation of its own privacy promises to consumers. The agency has…

While healthcare providers have been relatively slow to put chatbots to work, the time may have come for a chatbot explosion. With ChatGPT generating frenzied global interest, we may be at the tipping point for using chatbots in our daily lives, and…

Back when patient portals were first introduced, one of the original concerns clinicians raised was that they were afraid that they would get too many patient messages and find themselves overwhelmed. Over time, most stopped complaining about this…

In a deal that has gotten a fair bit of attention – and could lead to much bigger things – Epic has agreed to introduce a version of its EHR that should be easier to run on Apple devices. The agreement should please physicians, a large percentage of…

Two health systems have become the latest healthcare organizations to name a web tracking tool created by Meta (formerly Facebook) as responsible for their data breach. This comes as the social media giant faces a growing number of lawsuits alleging…

EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine has agreed to pay $45 million to the federal government to settle a whistleblower suit alleging that the vendor engaged in varied kickback schemes as well as causing its provider customers to submit false claims. The…

This week I read an essay by Health Futures President Jeff Goldsmith which made a case for moving beyond a much-beloved way of thinking about innovation and growth. In his essay, which appeared in The Health Care Blog, author Goldsmith argues that…

Anytime a health system moves its whole set of applications to an outside cloud vendor, it’s good to give that deal an extra look. Such a deal is especially visible and noteworthy, though, when it involves an organization as large and influential as…

A midwestern health system is partnering with a university to build a blockchain-based app focused on rewarding patients for complying with their regimen. Among the key goals of the project is to see whether the app can provide the rewards while…

Over the last several years, concern has grown among healthcare professionals over the ways patient data is being used, and just as importantly, how well patients understand what those uses are. However, if a new study is any indication, a minority…

A hospital program aimed at reducing EHR alert fatigue by cutting down the number of “interruptive” alerts has made a meaningful impact on the number of alerts clinicians received. The program was kicked off in 2020, by the Vanderbilt University…

New research on the future of clinical practice suggests that being technology savvy will be more critical than ever over the next decade — but that the majority of clinicians still don’t feel prepared. While I could have written this headline ten…

For many years, patients have made it clear that they want their medical bills to be more predictable and more convenient. To be sure, providers have made some progress in that direction, but less than you might think. In fact, a new survey from…

The US Department of Justice has announced that it intends to join a whistleblower lawsuit filed against EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine and cofounder and CEO Daniel Cane. The suit alleges that the company engaged in serious violations of the False…

New survey results suggest that the availability of telehealth-based mental health services — and the high level of mental health symptoms Americans experienced during the pandemic — led more consumers to seek mental health care online than ever…

Recently, we shared news about the growing feature set under development as part of Google Health’s Care Studio, most recently its “Conditions” feature which summarizes patient conditions and uses NLP to link related information like labs or…

About a year ago, Google gave the world a look at a pilot version of a new tool designed to give clinicians harmonized health data from different sources. The tool, Care Studio, is software designed to offer a comprehensive view of patient records…