Apama Medical is a privately held medical device company formed by Shifamed's medical incubator. It received Chinese notice of allowance for claims covering their low profile electrode assembly that enables the attachment of flexible electrodes to an ablation balloon for energy delivery and monitoring. The Chinese patent will complement an existing patent (U.S. Patent No. 8,295,902) giving Apama broad claim coverage for electrode-based ablation balloons in the United States and China for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). Utilizing this patented electrode technology enables Apama to design an ablation catheter that performs a full pulmonary vein (PV) ablation and rotor ablation in a single-shot.

ScImage announced availability of a Master Patient Index (MPI) Translator that provides healthcare professionals diagnostic imaging data residing in disparate systems, often located at unrelated facilities.

Blackford Analysis, a software provider with products to accelerate medical image comparison, introduced its software development kit (SDK) at the HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla.

Results of the 2013 HIMSS Security Survey show progress toward hardened security and use of analytics, but more work is needed to mitigate insider threat, such as inappropriate access of data by employees. Federal initiatives such as OCR audits, meaningful use (MU) and the HIPAA Omnibus Rule encourage healthcare organizations to increase the budgets and resources dedicated to securing patient health data. However, over the past year, 19 percent of respondents reported a security breach. Additionally, 12 percent of organizations have had at least one known case of medical identity theft reported by a patient.