Morning Headlines 12/12/13

Kathleen Sebelius calls for HealthCare.gov contracting, management investigation

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has asked the HHS Inspector General’s office to investigate the failed rollout of Healthcare.gov.

Open-source community helps with emergency VistA patch

A Georgia Tech graduate student working on his master’s degree thesis uncovers a security vulnerability in VistA that could impact patient’s medical treatments and compromise patient data. He brought the problem to the VA, but received no response. Next, he brought his findings to OSEHRA, a nonprofit open-source EHR developers forum. OSEHRA coordinated efforts fix the issue and, in partnership with VA, ensured that the patch was installed across all VA facilities.

CommonWell Announces Launch Geographies and Participants

CommonWell announces the first geographic areas that will be included in its vendor-backed HIE effort: Chicago, Illinois; Elkin and Henderson, North Carolina; and Columbia, South Carolina.

Data Helps Drive Lower Mortality Rate at Kaiser

John Mattison, MD, CMIO of Kaiser Permanente says that a large part of Kaiser’s lower than average mortality rates are "directly related to how we use data and integrate data.” He predicts that by 2020 ten times more medical research will be generated by by big data analytics than by conventional models of clinical research.