Morning Headlines 11/14/13

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and Tenet Healthcare Corporation Collaborate on Statewide ACO to Improve Quality and Efficiency of Care

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas will launch a state-wide ACO with Tenet Healthcare’s 10 Texas-based facilities in January 2015.

MIT’s shapeshifting display lets you reach out and touch someone

Researchers at MIT have created a prototype of a 3D monitor that it hopes will have implications in medical imaging by providing 3D visualizations of CT scans.

US, UK open public health cloud

The US and UK will begin consolidating de-identified patient data from CMS, the FDA, and the NHS in England. The data will be stored in a UK-hosted health data cloud, where it will be made available to researchers all over the world.

JAMA Delves Deep Into What’s Ailing American Healthcare

The November issue of JAMA delves into some of the critical issues within the US healthcare system and proposals to fix them. Topics included healthcare costs and outcomes, industry consolidation, and the tension between population health and individual healthcare. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, contributed a piece challenging the healthcare industry to shrink US per capita health care cost growth to no more than GDP + zero percent by 2020. He calls for, among many things, an increase in EHR adoption and remote patient monitoring as a means to this end.