Healthday News reports on recent data showing Americans increasingly are using online physician reviews and asks “whether it’s a good thing” that people “are choosing their doctor the same way they settle on a car or TV.” 

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Improving health and reducing health care costs nationwide depends on effective coordination between the organizations that treat patients (primary care providers) and those that work to prevent disease and promote health (public health practitioners). Read more.

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? 

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.

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?

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Experts from academia, industry and government will gather Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15-16 at the Washington D.C. Marriott at Metro Center at Metro Center to explore how information technology is making health care more patient-centered, effective and cost-efficient.

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?  

The Information Systems Society of Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) has named Ritu Agarwal of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business a 2013 Distinguished Fellow for her outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems field.

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.