Last Thursday, the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) hosted its first Health IT Executive Forum focusing on Federal and State Health IT Initiatives and Principles for Progressing in a Health IT-enabled Future in Maryland at its headquarters in Elkridge, Maryland.

In November 2009, American Public University System, a leading and accredited higher-education institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees online, unveiled its new face on the Internet. With a competitive and rapidly evolving landscape in the online education sector, increasing complexity of APUS's business, evolving sophistication of web users, and expansion of available web communication and interaction tools, APUS faced the challenge of delivering a completely new face that reflects the sophistication, mission, and aspiration of the enterprise.

 

Christopher Brandt was recently nominated by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley to serve as a board member on the Maryland Small Business Development Financing Authority (MSBDFA).  MSBDFA provides financial assistance to socially and economically disadvantaged small business owners throughout the state.

Deliberations from the GE Centricity EMR technology conference

On Wednesday, July 8th, American Public University System, an accredited higher-education institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees online, hosted hundreds of prospective students in a cutting-edge virtual environment.

The Maryland/DC/Virginia region is quickly becoming a hotbed for health information exchange (HIE).

Since the stimulus bill was signed into law in February of this year, in effect mandating incentives and penalties for health care providers tied to the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs), there has been an explosion of rhetoric around EHRs. Though EHRs are certainly a topic of concern for all providers, it appears two other important initiatives have been overshadowed by the debate.

Last Thursday, I attended a conference in Washington, D.C. that focused on health reform in long term care. As I listened to the impassioned speakers, each with broad ranging ideas for health reform, they all seemed to have one goal in common: to ensure long term care is given the attention it deserves and is not pushed aside amid the larger debate about health reform.

AI's PowerPoint presentation offers an overview of Medicare and Medicaid incentives and penalties in the stimulus bill for physicians.

A recent member survey by the American College of Physician Executives (ACPE) examines the adoption of health information technology (HIT) from 2004 to 2009. Overall, the survey finds that adoption of HIT has increased over the past five years.

Social networking is gaining traction in the government space.  Two AI team members attended a panel on this subject yesterday morning hosted by the American Council for Technology.

Today, AI officially became a Microsoft HealthVault consultant, one of only eight in the world.  Here is the link on MSDN.
 

AI's Software Projects Delivery Process is designed to cater to our and our clients' unique needs.

One of AI's most ambitious and exciting projects, the aging-focused web portal www.freedomyears.com, launched for the public today.

Audacious Inquiry, LLC, a leading management and technology firm, announces two milestones in its rapid growth. In the March 7th issue of the Baltimore Business Journal, Audacious Inquiry was recognized as one of the largest web design firms in the region. Audacious Inquiry has also received 8(a) certification as a minority-owned, disadvantaged business from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which will facilitate its expansion into federal government markets.

An article in this morning's Wall Street Journal points out that many services firms, from consultancies to ad agencies to law firms, are resorting to performance-based compensation models as a way of differentiating themselves in the currently brutal business environment.

It's long been a conventional wisdom of consumer product marketers that "supermarkets are places of high impulse buying -- fully 60 to 70 percent of purchases there were unplanned, grocery industry studies have shown us." So said psychologist and market researcher Paco Underhill in his 1999 book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.  In a newly published research paper, AI senior partner David Bell and two colleagues challenge this long-held view, uncovering evidence that far fewer of grocery shoppers' purchases are impulsive and, further, that impulsive shopping is driven less by in-store merchandising and more by traits of the individual purchaser.  The research will cause many marketers to reconsider their approaches to marketing grocery-store products from toothpaste to tomato sauce.

Maryland's Department of Information Technology has recommended that Audacious Inquiry receive a Master Contract award through its Consulting & Technical Services (CATS) II contracting vehicle.

A number of media outlets are running coverage on the CRISP plan for Maryland health information exchange. We have linked to them here.

AI Principal, Edmond Magny, shares his experience and opinion on how small employers can and do manage to respond to team member illness.