Health IT Certification Moves Forward Digital HealthCare & Productivity | WASHINGTON—The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) is turning its attention to medical specialty boards in its bid for recognition of clinical informatics as a distinct medical subspecialty, following the approval of detailed plans for physician informatician training and competency.

Certifying PHRs Digital HealthCare & Productivity | The first set of certification criteria for personal health records (PHRs) products will focus more on privacy, security, and interoperability with other health-IT and less on specific functionality in an effort to foster innovation in a relatively new market segment, according to the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT).

Warfarin Test: Who Should Pay for Personalized Medicine? Digital HealthCare & Productivity | Payers, physicians, and the pharmaceutical industry are closely watching CMS deliberations over whether or not to pay for a genetic-based test that provides guidance on Warfarin dosing. The FDA, which approved the test, says it’s an important tool, but the CMS isn’t so sure and opened a National Coverage Analysis (NCA) on the subject in August.

Lively Debate at HIPAA Summit at Harvard Digital HealthCare & Productivity | Are patient privacy rules effective? The answer is not a simple yes or no. “It’s working, but it’s got a ways to go,” suggests William Braithwaite, chief medical officer of San Diego-based security and identity management company Anakam.

Security Features Not Limited to Paper Digital HealthCare & Productivity | Electronic prescribers who want to print prescriptions for Medicaid patients no longer will have to spend up to 10 times the cost of plain paper to comply with new tamper-resistance regulations, the result of intense negotiations between government officials, medical societies, the pharmacy industry, paper manufacturers, and two health-IT advocacy groups.