A report by the Brookings Institution suggests that mobile devices could help reduce medical costs and improve patient care.  An analysis by Robert Litan, an economist for Brookings, found that using remote monitoring technologies could reduce healthcare costs in the U.S. by as much as $197 billion over the next 25 years.

The report notes that devices such as the Gluco Phone (for monitoring glucose level information) and iHeal (for monitoring skin temperature and activity of the nervous system) can give patients an increasing level of control over their own care while decreasing the burden on healthcare providers and making face-to-face visits less frequent.  

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to approve a plan this week to dedicate some of the available bandwidth to wireless healthcare monitoring devices.  The government agency will consider the new rules at its Commission meeting on Thursday.

The approval would make it easier for the healthcare industry to use allocated broadband space to create mobile body area networks (MBANs). 

Health Level Seven International (HL7), a non-profit standards development organization, is encouraging clinician healthcare providers to participate in developing standards for Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems.  The ANSI-accredited global authority for healthcare information interoperability and standards yesterday announced the launch of its pilot membership program and Web site seeking increased input from caregivers to help ensure that healthcare IT (HIT) standards support an increasingly patient-centered healthcare system.

A new report from healthcare market research and advisory firm Manhattan Research indicates that physician use of tablet computers has almost doubled since 2011.  The annual “Taking the Pulse” study found that tablet adoption for professional purposes reached 62 percent in the first quarter of 2012, compared with 35% during the same period last year. 

Software-as-a-service Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems are generating more interest from healthcare providers, according to a report from KLAS.  Better security for cloud-based data storage and decreasing prices were cited as major incentives for considering SaaS-based EMRs.

The relatively modest investments in hardware, ease of use, hands-off maintenance, and greater confidence in cloud storage are helping to make SaaS solutions more attractice to providers,

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Wednesday published the names and business addresses and phone numbers of Medicare providers who have demonstrated meaningful use of an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system and received incentive payments as of March 2012.

CMS has posted a list of healthcare professionals and a list of hospitals that have received incentive payments,

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has announced the launch of its new Health IT Dashboard this week.  The dashboard, accessible at http://dashboard.healthit.gov, was created to present key information about ONC’s strategy and grants programs, regional extension centers, and other research data regarding the national adoption of healthcare IT.

A study from the Commonwealth Fund has determined that more technology use and higher prices, and not increased usage of medical services, appear to be the primary forces behind higher U.S. healthcare spending.  The study by the private foundation, which supports independent research on healthcare issues, found that the U.S. does not provide “notably superior”