With the HIMSS 2012 conference in full swing this week, new data out from Compass Intelligence suggests the market for healthcare IT will reach $78B in 2012.

This includes expenditures on telecom services/equipment, IT personnel, mobile applications, computer hardware, network hardware and 3rd party services and outsourcing, according to the research.  The market is expected to maintain a 5% CAGR over the next five years as well, to reach $92B in 2016.

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It’s been announced by the American Medical Association (AMA) and AT&T that the two have forged a partnership to enable “hundreds of thousands of physicians, physician organizations and medical societies nationwide to connect and collaborate with hospitals, payers and patients to help enhance patient care and reduce costs.”

To accomplish this goal, the two organizations will integrate the AMA’s “AMAGINE” physician community portal with AT&T’s “Healthcare Community Online,” which will create a centralized, advanced collaborative care and Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) platform.  Together, both organizations have the primary goal of providing physicians with more “tools at their fingertips to modernize the management of their practices.”

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Now that the 2012 HIMSS conference is in full swing in Las Vegas, the product and solution announcements are coming in hot and heavy, with Dell being no exception.  The computing powerhouse will be on hand to debut two new solutions designed exclusively for the healthcare industry; a new cloud-based archiving solution and an update to its mobile clinical computing solution.

Dell’s new cloud-based archiving solution stems from its acquisition of InSite One in December of 2010, and the company has since developed a complete clinical archiving solution that enables “easy and secure data retrieval and sharing for the clinician, while simplifying IT management and maintenance overhead with a variety of storage options.”  Dell says global expansion and a new alliance with Siemens will extend the reach of its UCA solution and cloud-hosting capabilities into new markets in 2012.

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It’s been announced by Fiberlink, a company providing SaaS solutions for mobile device and application management, has debuted a new edition of its “MaaS360″ platform for the healthcare industry.

MaaS360 for Healthcare was designed to provide a single, unified view of policy and status reporting across tablets and smartphones for healthcare organizations.  The platform aims to help CIOs and others responsible for data and device security to identify and manage the “complex challenges of mHealth initiatives and data security risks to meet strict HIPAA compliance requirements.”

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It’s been announced that Polyglot Systems, who provides award-winning “Meducation” content to hard-to-reach patients through mobile web, apps and e-mail technology, has partnered with CellepathicRx to deliver its medication adherence solution through the latter’s mHealth platform.

Polyglot specializes in providing medication adherence solutions aimed at patients who have low health literacy or difficulty understanding English.  Through its Meducation content, patients and healthcare providers can access medication instructions that are written at a 5th to 6th grade reading level in any of over twelve languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Haitian Creole, Italian, French, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Polish and others.  Instructions can also be printed in large fonts for those with impaired vision.  The solution even lets patients access online videos demonstrating proper medication use for medications that are especially hard to use and understand.

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New research published recently by the GSMA suggests the market for mHealth will produce a revenue opportunity worth more than $23B by 2017.

The findings come as part of a new report published recently called ‘Touching Lives through Mobile Health: Assessment of the Global Market Opportunity.’  Conducted by PwC for the GSMA, the report looks at the key challenges the healthcare industry is facing worldwide and the opportunity mobile technology provides in overcoming these challenges.

The report says that despite advancements in medical technologies and a general increase in income levels, healthcare continues to pose challenges of affordability, complexity and access across the world, while in contrast, mobile access is almost ubiquitous.  With the increasing penetration of smartphones and new and innovative ‘connected devices’, and the proliferation of Mobile Broadband networks and services worldwide, mobile will play a far greater role in healthcare in both developed and developing countries in the future.

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The long-awaited and anticipated digital health accelerator “StartUp Health” has officially launched it’s Website and opened its doors in New York City.

The new initiative has the bold aim of cultivating over 1,000 digital health startups over the next ten years, which it hopes will generate more than 100,000 jobs.  StartUp Health is chaired by Jerry Levin, former Chairman of TimeWarner.  Levin’s co-founders, Steven H. Krein and Unity Stoakes, founded OrganizedWisdom together, which is a so-called “digital doctor’s office” and patient portal, among other ventures.

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