Heather Havenstein

Five large companies said they would begin next year to provide their employees access to an electronic medical record system that would be used to help reduce the hefty costs of health care.

Officials from a New York county compelled 100 Medicaid recipients to obtain documentation from their physicians to justify frequent narcotics prescriptions. They used business intelligence and analytics tools to identify patients whose prescription totals warranted investigation for attempting to commit fraud.

Robert Kolodner was named interim national coordinator for health IT at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in September, replacing David Brailer, the first person to hold the post. Kolodner was previously chief health informatics officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

It could be the only issue that Democrats and Republicans can agree on before Tuesday's midterm elections. IT helps target specific voters.

More than 64 computer programmers from 19 countries gathered in Las Vegas recently for the 2006 TopCoder Open, where developers competed to solve a complex algorithmic problem, design an application or develop a software component.

President Bush issued an executive order requiring the four agencies charged with overseeing fed programs to overhaul IT for the exchange of health data and measurement quality.

Earlier this month, the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association announced an initiative to compile claims information from 79 million patients into a database that can be shared with 20 participating Blue Cross plans.

IBM Corp. unveiled a new radio frequency identification (RFID) system designed to stamp out counterfeit products from the national supply of pharmaceutical drugs.