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By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Created 04/26/2012
WASHINGTON – The changes taking place in U.S. healthcare as a result of rapid healthcare IT adoption leave the nation's health IT chief Farzad Mostashari optimistic - especially about improving quality, he told the audience at a meeting of the National Quality Forum Thursday, as he urged: "Keep our eyes on the prize."
Known for rousing speeches, this one was no different as he advocated, cajoled and urged the audience to put the patient at the center.
Quality is the cornerstone of what needs to be done, Mostashari emphasized. "When Congress wrote HITECH Act, they didn’t micromanage what meaningful use would mean. But they did say, three things needed to be included, and one of them was quality measures."
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Karen Minich-Pourshadi, for HealthLeaders Media , April 27, 2012
This article appears in the April 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.
With the looming threat of reimbursement losses for preventable 30-day readmissions, healthcare organizations nationwide are analyzing care transitions in an effort to achieve better outcomes and keep patients from returning to their facilities unnecessarily. While transition programs show promise in helping hospitals reduce their readmission rates, predictive models are also being used successfully in tandem with these programs. Three early adopters of these models are achieving positive results thanks to tactics and technology that identify at-risk patients from the outset of care and influence treatment approaches and the level of transitional care needed.
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HCFO
April 2012
Mistakes in the clinical setting are responsible for an estimated $17 billion of direct costs annually to the health care system.Proponents of health information technology (HIT) believe tools like electronic health records (EHRs) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) could help reduce these errors and related costs by improving communication between providers and encouraging the implementation of standard guidelines and decision-support tools.
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Better Care, Better Health, Better Value
April 27, 2012 (Regina, SK) - Saskatchewan residents will soon have access to faster lab results. Today, the province introduced the Saskatchewan Lab Results Repository that will help improve patient care.
“Helping patients get access to health care services as quickly as possible is a priority,” said Minister of Health, Don McMorris. “This service puts results in providers’ hands faster than traditional ways of receiving lab results.”
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APR 27, 2012 10:56am ET
Last December, I prepared a cover story for our print magazine, “Here Comes Trouble,” that laid out the top ten fear factors facing the industry in the transition to ICD-10. After recently attending a leadership conference on ICD-10 sponsored by The Advisory Board Company, I could easily add another 10—or more—fear factors to the list. On the hospital side of the industry, the massive diagnosis and procedural coding system represents a change whose breadth is unprecedented. And as speakers at the summit pointed out, the new coding system—which is at the heart of hospital billing—has major financial implications. The financial risk resides not only in the cost of the transition, but in the eventual impact on service line reimbursement based on the way the government calculates its DRG groupings.
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By mdhirsch
Created Apr 26 2012 - 9:31am
As the clock ticks down toward the May 7 deadline for commenting on the proposed Stage 2 Meaningful Use rules, reports that express concern about the program seem to be rising.
The latest warning cry, this time from consulting giant KMPG, reveals that many hospitals and health systems--arguably the more sophisticated providers eligible for the incentive program--don't even understand the requirements for Stage 1 of Meaningful Use , let alone believe that they'll successfully attest to them. But evidently these results are not surprising, and mirror reports elsewhere, Mike Beaty, Principal at KPMG and Health IT Enablement Leader tells FierceEMR.
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By mdhirsch
Created Apr 26 2012 - 9:14am
A large number of hospitals and health systems are concerned about their capability to meet Stage 1 of Meaningful Use, according to a new poll released by KPMG, a U.S. tax, consulting and advisory services firm.
The survey, conducted during a recent webcast and released April 24, revealed that while almost three-fourths of hospitals surveyed (71 percent) reported that they were more than 50 percent of the way to completing adoption of their electronic health records, many of them worried about meeting the requirements. Less than half (48 percent) were confident in their level of readiness to meet Stage 1 of Meaningful Use. More than one-third (39 percent) were only somewhat confident in their ability to meet Stage 1; 3 percent admitted that they weren't at all ready to meet the requirements.
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By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor
Created 04/26/2012
ARMONK, NY – IBM has made news on the big data front twice this week, first with Wednesday's acquisition of Pittsburgh-based Vivisimo, and today with an announcement from SUNY Buffalo about multiple sclerosis research.
Vivisimo develops federated discovery and navigation software meant to enable organizations to access and analyze big data enterprise-wide. With some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, IBM says the deal – terms of which were not disclosed – will help accelerate its analytics initiatives, helping organizations such as healthcare providers, government agencies and telecommunications companies navigate and analyze the full variety, velocity and volume of structured and unstructured data.
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By Michelle McNickle, Web Content Producer
Created 04/25/2012
As recent talks have Health Level Seven International (HL7) moving beyond IT professionals, the standards process is setting the stage to make a significant impact on usability and workflow. And as more communities are embracing HL7, learning the basic ins-and-outs of the standards process is more important than ever.
Rob Brull, product manager at Corepoint Health, answers eight common questions about HL7.
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By danb
Created Apr 26 2012 - 1:08pm
While a majority of hospital CIOs responding to a recent survey conducted by healthsystemCIO.com say they are participating in regional health or system-to-system information exchange efforts, not all of the respondents have faith in such efforts. In fact, some see such HIEs as a "Band-Aid approach" until interoperability enables more seamless information sharing between providers, according to a healthsystemCIO.com post .
Overall, 58 percent of the 174 respondents say their organizations are currently participating in regional or system-to-system HIE efforts. And 80 percent said integration with outside providers is a top three priority. Close to 21 percent, though, say they are "skeptical" of HIE sustainability, while another 21 percent say that while they are hopeful, they need to see more results before passing judgment.
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By sjackson
Created Apr 26 2012 - 1:34pm
Technology holds several important keys for improving the lives of seniors, according to a study published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease this week. The report explores the emergence of seniors as "e-patients " and the potential of technology to empower them and improve their health.
For example, the authors point out, video-enabled telehealth services provide a critical service for aging adults--the ability to receive care at home, without having to travel. It particularly will be valuable for seniors who are located in hard-to-reach areas, and for whom traveling to health clinics is a major obstacle to obtaining care.
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Written by Kathleen Roney | April 24, 2012
A new mobile application, DocBookMD, allows physicians to send and receive secure HIPAA-compliant patient information from a smartphone.
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April 25, 2012
According to a new report from New York-based market research publisher Kalorama Information, the fastest growing segment in the EMR market is web-based solutions, sold over the internet, mainly to private, office-based physicians. Overall, sales of EMRs to physicians grew at an estimated 22 percent from 2010 to 2011, higher than the growth of EMR sales to hospital systems.
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By Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Created 04/25/2012
WASHINGTON – There was a readiness gap between what physicians thought they could do and what they were eligible to do to collect meaningful use incentives last year, a new study finds.
According to the report, which appears in the May issue of Health Affairs, 91 percent of physicians nationwide said they were eligible for federal EHR incentives in 2011, but only ten percent intended to apply for the program, falling on the low side of what the federal government had anticipated.
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4/26/2012 @ 9:59AM
When reporting on Epic Systems, I asked several hospital chief information officers, as well as Claudia Williams, a director at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, whether Cerner, Epic Systems, and Allscripts will continue to dominate the market for electronic health records. Their answer was a quick no. “No one vendor can dominate, it is an evolving marketplace,” says Williams. “It’s clear to me that these EHRs we are rolling out today are version 1.0. In the next five years, we’ll see someone leapfrog to bring us to the next generation that mimics the workflow of doctors and nurses,” says Pamela McNutt, chief information officer at Dallas-based Methodist Health System, which uses Meditech’s EHR.
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By Bernie Monegain, Editor
Created 04/24/2012
The findings are from the Automating Population Health Research Project, which seeks to educate the healthcare industry on how best to apply technology in meeting the challenges of population health management.
“Population Health Management: A Roadmap for Provider-Based Automation in a New Era of Healthcare” was prepared in consultation with a broad range of industry experts, iHT2 officials say.
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By Mike Miliard, Contributing Editor
Most hospitals and health systems report being well along in completing electronic health record implementation, but many still have doubts about their ability to meet new EHR standards, according to a new poll from KPMG.
Forty-eight percent of hospital and health system business leaders who participated in the survey said they were confident in their organization’s level of readiness to meet Stage 1 meaningful use requirements, say KPMG officials. Thirty-nine percent said they were somewhat confident, 3 percent said they were not confident at all, and 10 percent didn’t know what their level of readiness was.
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By Dr. John Loonsk
Health IT is at a critical juncture with the technical NPRM for Stage 2 of Meaningful Use (MU). There have always been questions about whether enough standards, implementation guidance, and policies would be expressed ahead of the huge HITECH EHR investment in order to leverage an interoperable health IT infrastructure for health reform needs. But now, in addition to the tiered schedule for meeting MU requirements, the deadlines for Stages 2 and 3 have been further extended. As a result, Stage 2 standards and certification requirements will be the only technical requirements some EHRs are held to as late as 2019.
Numerous CMS programs will tweak the related quality measures in an ongoing fashion, but MU is the only place with any focus on the technical tools to actually help manage the quality of care. And while many Stage 2 commenters will focus on those voluminous quality measures, threshold changes, and MU timing complexities, there are core technical building blocks that may be more important for the success of health IT than any of the measure specifics.
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APR 23, 2012 4:36pm ET
Thomson Reuters will sell its health care business line to an affiliate of Veritas Capital for $1.25 billion in cash.
The business includes provider clinical decision support in Micromedex, clinical benchmarking and regulatory reporting, data analytics including the MarketScan research databases, payer fraud and abuse management and cost control applications, and the Medical Episode Grouper methodology to enable government agencies to evaluate provider performance.
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23 April 2012 Rebecca Todd
GPs and community services in Cumbria are streaming live into a shared patient record that can be viewed in some out-of-hours providers via Healthcare Gateway's medical interoperability gateway.
NHS Cumbria hosted an interoperability day last week to showcase its work on sharing patient information between services.
NHS Cumbria chief clinical information officer Dr William Lumb said the area’s population was ageing and suffering from more long term conditions.
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By mdhirsch
Created Apr 24 2012 - 12:28pm
Patient outcomes would improve--and at a much lower cost--if only the United States would embrace telemedicine, says Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Govindarajan, writing in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post , points to a recent study of telemedicine at Lazarus Hospital in India that adopted telemedicine to treat patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD). For their rural patients, the hospital opted to use peritoneal dialysis (PD), which is performed in patients' homes, rather than the more expensive hemodialysis (HD), which is provided at the hospital and which requires the patients to travel for treatment.
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By gshaw
Created Apr 24 2012 - 10:25am
Healthcare technology continues to come under fire for failing to deliver results--whether lower costs, increased efficiency, better clinical outcomes. This time researchers are turning their critical eye to clinical decision support.
Despite increasing emphasis on the role of clinical decision-support systems for improving care and reducing costs, evidence to support widespread use is lacking, they conclude in a systematic review of 148 randomized, controlled trials. The study was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
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Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , April 24, 2012
Lyle Berkowitz, MD, has graced the pages of HealthLeaders Media before, but with the new twist his story is taking, healthcare technology leaders everywhere should take notice.
Berkowitz had recently founded the Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program while continuing his primary care practice at Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group, the largest primary care group in the city of Chicago.
Now, in addition to these ongoing duties, add entrepreneur to his CV. In the process, he's using more technology to disrupt current healthcare best practices.
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With the help of The Eatery, CardioTrainer, and other no-cost mobile coaches, you can take control of your diet and exercise routine.
By Megan Geuss Apr 23, 2012 6:00 PM
Staying in shape is a constant struggle, but a slew of apps out there can help you track your fitness.
If you’ve always regarded counting calories as too challenging, try a new app called The Eatery (available on iOS only), which lets you snap pictures of your food and rate the general healthfulness of the meal. You can post images, and ask friends who use The Eatery to comment on them. From your self-reported information, The Eatery gives you insight into where the traps are in your eating habits, and how healthy your diet was for the past week. Looking for a more-specific diet tracker? Calorific for iOS and Android gives you a food library to record your calories, and assigns foods a red, yellow, or green light depending on whether they’re likely to help or harm your health.
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Posted: April 24, 2012 - 1:45 pm ET
To be certified for use in the federal electronic health-record incentive payment programs, EHRs should have to demonstrate that they can authenticate the identity of patients looking to view or download their medical records or have their records transmitted to someone else, according to a federal privacy work group.
The Privacy and Security Tiger Team of the federally chartered Health IT Policy Committee met Monday to go over a four-page draft of comments on a pair of proposed rules issued in February by the CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The proposed rules govern Stage 2 of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive payment programs created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Stage 2 rules are expected to come into use in 2014.
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By Sandra L. Decker, Eric W. Jamoom, and Jane E. Sisk
Decker and Jamoom are with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics; Sisk is a scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Medicine.
To analyze the rate of adoption of EHR systems from 2002 to 2011 among office-based physicians, the authors used data from the annual National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Overall, there was a 38 percentage point increase in EHR adoption among office-based physicians, and by 2011 more than half of physicians had EHR systems, tripling the percentage of physicians with EHRs over the decade.
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By Catherine M. DesRoches, Chantal Worzala, Maulik S. Joshi, Peter Kravolec, and Ashish K. Jha
DesRoches is at Mathematica Policy Research; Worzala, Joshi, and Kralovec are with the American Hospital Association; and Jha is affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
In the first nationally representative survey of hospital EHR system adoption since the federal incentive program began, the authors examined the rate of EHR adoption among US hospitals, using data from the American Hospital Association annual survey of health information technology. Overall, they found that the percentage of hospitals with at least a basic EHR system increased from 15.1 percent in 2010 to 26.6 percent in 2011. Also, they found that 18.4 percent of US hospitals had achieved what is a reasonable proxy for meaningful use, a large jump from just 4.1 percent in 2010.
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By Chun-Ju Hsiao, Sandra L. Decker, Esther Hing, and Jane E. Sisk
Hsiao, Decker, and Hing are with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics; Sisk is a scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Medicine.
This study is one of the first to look at physicians' eligibility and intentions to apply for federal incentives as well as capabilities of physicians' EHRs to support meaningful use. The authors used data from the 2011 Electronic Medical Records Supplement to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics and sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
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HITECH Act is prompting widespread adoption of e-health records, but there's more to "Meaningful Use" than what's in the government's programs.
April 24, 2012
With billions of dollars of HITECH Act incentives are being waved in front of healthcare providers for the meaningful use of health IT, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that the percentage of healthcare providers using digital records has doubled over the last two years. Undoubtedly, that's impressive progress, considering that e-health record technology has been around for decades, and adoption was in single-digit percentages until very recently. But digging below the surface, there are a couple key things to keep in perspective.
For starters, it's a good thing the HITECH Act's financial incentives are tied to a laundry list of objectives and measures that healthcare providers need to accomplish through the meaningful use of health IT, and aren't just being paid for the broad adoption of EHRs. 
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APR 20, 2012 2:39pm ET
“Know the enemy and know yourself, and your victory will never be endangered; know the weather and know the ground, and your victory will then be complete.”
Sun Tzu 500 B.C.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Sun Tzu asserted that with sufficient knowledge about yourself, your opponent and the environment, your victory would be assured. In our battles against rising health care costs and medical errors, this wisdom has been lost.
As an industry, when it comes to technology we are concerned with adoption, usability, efficiency and features. We are much less concerned with knowledge generation. Unfortunately, it is the knowledge generation that will lead to a significant return on investment. Technology purchases that do not help us understand our organizations, staff, environments and patient care challenges will never demonstrate the promised gains in safety and cost reductions.
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By Mary Mosquera, Contributing Editor
Created 04/23/2012
WASHINGTON – If the Supreme Court were to overturn the health reform law, five areas in the statute that rely heavily on health IT tools could lose funding for their implementation.
Striking the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) would not knock out health IT in general, but it would delay the more active involvement of the federal government in health IT when it comes to quality reporting and benchmarking.
Raising performance criteria to the federal level will spread more broadly the adoption of electronic health records and, in turn, enable health reform, said James Wieland, principal at Ober, Kaler, Grimes & Shriver in Baltimore, Md., and a member of the HIMSS legal task force. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the ACA in June.
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ICD-10 triggers computer-assisted coding adoption
By kterry
Created Apr 23 2012 - 1:23pm
Spurred by the impending transition to the ICD-10 diagnostic code set, nearly half of healthcare providers surveyed by KLAS Research plan to adopt computer-assisted coding (CAC) software within the next two years. Twenty-one percent of providers already use CAC applications, according to the Orem, Utah-based research firm.
Many providers believe that CAC can help them compensate for some of the lost productivity and reimbursement that ICD-10 will bring, KLAS said in its announcement. ICD-10 will require more intensive coding work because it has five times as many codes as the current ICD-9 set.
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By kterry
Created Apr 22 2012 - 10:43am
Recently, the advocates of disruptive change in healthcare have been focusing on the possibilities of hot new social networking and gaming apps for improving health behavior. There are some indications that this approach may bear fruit. But some older methods of using health IT to improve healthcare quality and efficiency have received much less attention, despite evidence of their effectiveness.
Studies have shown the value of computer kiosks, for example, in several care settings. In urgent care centers and emergency departments , kiosks have been used to eliminate the need for women with uncomplicated urinary tract infections to see a physician; other EDs have used kiosks to teach patients about appropriate use of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections; free and rural health clinics have employed them to educate patients about chronic disease self-care and health behavior change; and in the U.K., kiosks in the waiting rooms of general practitioners have improved outcomes and saved the practices time and money.
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By Mary Mosquera, Contributing Editor
Created 04/20/2012
WASHINGTON – The Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record program has paid $4.5 billion to 76,612 physicians and hospitals in incentive payments through March 2012.
Of that amount, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid out $339.9 million for Medicare eligible providers, according to its latest data.
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Many doctors say they want technology tools for medical education and training. But actions speak louder than words.
April 20, 2012
Many doctors say they want to spend more time engaging in online activities. But that doesn't reflect their actions in the real world. According to a survey that measured physicians' digital behavior, 84% of doctors would prefer to attend events such as continuing medical education (CME) training online. But only 6.4% say that they actually participate in virtual events very often, and only 18.5% participate in them often.
The Joint Survey of Physician Digital Behavior, conducted by San Francisco-based ON24 and Boston-based MedData Group, queried 971 physicians about their online behavior and use of technology such as the iPad. Among the major findings: 75.5% of the respondents realized that virtual events and webcasts are increasing in number, while 91% asserted that they see benefits to being able to attend more conferences, meetings, and CME events virtually. In addition, 35% of the respondents said that embracing virtual events leads to better overall patient care.
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By William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, President, Health Record Banking Alliance
In a major new development in the world of health IT, the Data Privacy Lab in the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University will soon unveil a health record bank (HRB) that allows anyone to own and manage a complete, secure, digital copy of their health records and wellness information with a free account. This is the first time that a prominent academic institution is hosting an HRB for use by the general public and communities nationwide.
The service, called MyDataCan, is a secure and trustworthy technical infrastructure for receiving, storing and facilitating consumer-controlled access to personal information, including medical data. Its design is extensible to cover various forms of personal data, customizable through third-party applications, and benefits from a multimillion-dollar investment by Harvard.
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FRIDAY, April 20 (HealthDay News) -- For adolescents presenting with depressive symptoms, use of a computerized cognitive behavior therapy intervention (SPARX; Smart, Positive, Active, Realistic, X-factor thoughts) is a potential alternative to usual care, according to a study published online April 19 in BMJ.
Sally N. Merry, M.B.Ch.B., from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and colleagues conducted a multicenter randomized controlled trial involving 187 adolescents, aged 12 to 19, seeking help for depressive symptoms. Participants were allocated to SPARX (94 adolescents), which comprised seven modules delivered over a period of four to seven weeks, or usual care (93 adolescents), comprising in-person counseling delivered by trained counselors and clinical psychologists.
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Monday, April 23, 2012
by Lisa Zamosky, iHealthBeat Contributing Reporter
Americans love to play video games. In 2010, the gaming industry generated more than $25 billion in revenue on digital games, which includes software and content sold for home-based consoles, portable gaming, and digital and social games, according to market research company the NPD Group. In the same year, 72% of American households reported playing computer or video games.
As the gaming industry has grown, so, too, has an interest in harnessing the power of play to help consumers improve their health. Finding entertaining ways of getting people to eat a healthier diet, exercise more or keep track of and treat chronic illness is becoming big business.
"It's clearly a growing market," said Bill Ferguson -- editor-in-chief of the Games for Health Journal: Research, Development, and Clinical Applications, a new peer-reviewed journal dedicated to game technology that improves physical and mental health and well-being.
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Enjoy!
David.
