Morning Headlines 7/14/14

WellPoint CEO: Insurer readies for technology wave

Joseph Swedish, CEO of the insurance company WellPoint, says in an interview that he will drive the company to adopt new technologies to reduce health costs, including telehealth, workplace health kiosks, and participation on insurance exchanges.

Verona’s Epic Systems adding employees

Epic adds 600 employees since February, bringing its total to 7,400. Epic has seen tremendous growth in the past three years when, in June 2011, the company’s head count sat at just 4,200.

Duke Medicine’s Big Data Plan to Improve Population Health

Ex-NASA Geospatial Scientist Sohayla Pruittan launches Duke Medicines new location-centric population health platform that will analyze health trends down to individual neighborhoods. She says, “When we visually map a population and a health issue, we want to give an understanding about why something is happening in a neighborhood. Are there certain socioeconomic factors that are contributing? Do they not have access to certain things? Do they have too much access to certain things like fast food restaurants?”

Key statistics for Summary Care Records

In England, the Health & Social Care Information Centre announces that nearly 41 million Summary Care Records have been generated by 5,454 practice offices thus far.