Morning Headline 10/14/14

Promoting healthy competition in health IT markets

The FTC announces that it will work together with the ONC to ensure that EHR vendors are not restricting interoperability options to gain illegal competitive advantages.

2014 Report to Congress on Health IT Adoption and HIE

The ONC publishes its ARRA-mandated annual progress report on the national rollout of EHRs and HIEs. The report provides an in depth look at ONC’s various initiatives, focusing primarily on the steps that are being taken to overcome interoperability barriers.

Mass. Becomes First State To Require Price Tags For Health Care

A Massachusetts law requiring that insurers publish the prices they pay hospitals and practices for services went into effect last week. To comply, insurers are updating their websites with the once closely guarded pricing data.

NIH Invests Almost $32 Million To Increase Usability Of Biomedical Research Data

The NIH announces a new $32 million grant program called Big Data to Knowledge, or BD2K, that will be used to fund research projects aimed at developing new ways of analyzing large biomedical data sets.