Technology is opening the "black box" of hospital operations to researchers, while patient empowerment and groundbreaking, patient-centered and patient-powered research networks loom to tackle health challenges from obesity to rare diseases.

These topics were among the focal points of the fourth annual Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE) held Nov. 15-16 in Washington D.C., and presented by the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) in the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Smith's Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) sponsored an interdisciplinary UMD team in capturing first place in the 2013 American Public Health Association's (APHA) Codeathon aimed at helping to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation and even faster than college tuition. At the same time the quality of health care in the U.S. has been uneven at best.  Many look to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as an opportunity for information technology and other innovative approaches to improve both the efficiency and quality of health services. 

What are the key elements of this transformation? What’s working? What are some significant barriers?  

Professors at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business -- Sean Barnes, assistant professor of operations management,  and Bruce Golden, The France-Merrick Chair in Management Science -- have developed a framework to help prevent costly and deadly infections acquired by hospitalized patients.