President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney wove healthcare issues such as contraception and rising premiums into a discussion dominated by other topics.

Parties and candidates will inevitably stoke the health reform debate fires between now and November but the one aspect they all seem to agree on, at least publicly, is the raft of benefits health IT brings. But the survival of HIT's bipartisan nature will ultimately be a matter of federal funding -- and not all health-centric technologies are equal.

Last year HIMSS became a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and committed to develop and implement the Healthcare Transformation Project (HTP).

In a farewell column, NHINWatch Editor Patty Enrado shares her excitement for handing day-to-day operations of the site over to Government Health IT's own Anthony Brino.

For starters, the meaningful use funding lives under a different law. But no matter how the justices rule, there will still be considerable uncertainty.

Amid all the noise around New Mexico's Gov. Martinez as a possible vice presidential candidate on Mitt Romney's ticket, the state is another example of state government sending mixed messages on a health insurance exchange.

Will majority SCOTUS justices reach beyond conservative leanings to turn the switch on healthcare reform or maintain healthcare patchwork?

Farzad Mostashari, M.D., National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday, March 9th in Los Angeles, "It is time for patients to ask for copies of their electronic medical record and download them. We do it for every other aspect of our lives but healthcare." In an article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times, Mostashari also said that "patients should take matters into their own hands." MMRGlobal, Inc. (OTCBB: MMRF), using its patented MyMedicalRecords Personal Health Record (PHR) and MMRPro document management and imaging systems for healthcare professionals, provides the only available option of its kind for patients to receive delivery of their medical records in near real time regardless of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system or any technology being deployed in the physician's office, hospital or emergency facility.

The GOP candidate has taken a long and weaving road to arrive at his current stance concerning health IT's power to transform care delivery, and gained considerable attention, as well as financial profit, along the way.