Morning Headlines 10/3/13

As Demand Stays High, Officials Try to Address Problems in Exchanges

Federal and state health insurance exchanges are struggling with numerous glitches and unexpected traffic volumes. The federal HIE, Healthcare.gov, crashed Tuesday after receiving one million visitors before 7am. The federal site is back up, but is still plagued with glitches and long delays.

Epocrates Bugs + Drugs App: Big Data for Better Care

Epocrates launches its first new app since being acquired by AthenaHealth. The app uses infectious disease information pulled from Athena’s 40 million de-identified patient charts to provide physicians with real-time information on which antibiotics are working best to kill different organisms in their communities.

VA warns disability claims progress ‘at risk’

The VA issues a warning that gains made to reduce the disability claims backlogs will be lost during the government shutdown due to an inability to pay claims processors overtime. The overtime program was established in May and has resulted in a 30 percent drop in outstanding claims.

Introducing the Box + Dignity Health Patient Education App Challenge

This week during the Health 2.0 conference, cloud-based file sharing vendor Box announces a $100,000 innovation challenge soliciting app designs that will help extending the patient education process into the post-acute environment.