There was big news for the healthcare IT industry this week — a new national coordinator for health information technology! We cover this great news in addition to survey results reports regarding the healthcare analytics industry and ICD-10 readiness. Find out about the top stories in our HITNews Roundup.

New national coordinator for health information technology is chosen

The Obama administration appointed Dr. Karen DeSalvo to the position of national coordinator this week. The position has been held by interim coordinator, Dr. Jacob Reider, since Farzhad Mostashari’s departure in October.

The health IT community warmly responded to the announcement with an outpouring of support for Dr. DeSalvo on social media and in the news. Modern Healthcare reports that DeSalvo will step into the position on January 13, 2014.

Healthcare analytics industry will boom over the next six years

A recent report released, reveals that the healthcare analytics industry will be worth $21 billion by 2020. The report was published by MarketsandMarkets and was covered by FierceHealthIT, this week. According to the article in FierceHealthIT, the industry will grow at an annual rate of more than 25 percent over the next six years. The growth will be driven by predictive and prescriptive analytics.

More results showing slow progress in the transition to ICD-10

Last week, we published results of a survey we conducted, assessing hospital preparedness in the move to ICD-10. The results were not optimistic in light of the quickly-approaching deadline. This week, more survey results were published supporting the conclusion that many providers are not where they need to be in order to transition in time for the October 1, 2014 deadline. The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange survey, covered by Healthcare IT News, concludes that 80 percent of healthcare providers will fail to complete their business changes and begin testing before 2014.  It also finds that 20 percent of vendors are not prepared.

Health IT dashboard provides informative look at industry achievements

HealthIT.gov recently published an interactive and extremely informative dashboard detailing the progress the industry is making. The tool provides insights on several areas:

• Health IT Adoption and Use
• Regional Extension Center Program
• Health IT Workforce Training
• Meaningful Use / MIPS
• Datasets and Documentation

Vibrant, interactive visuals make the tool easy to use and extremely informative. According to the site, the resources will be updated on a regular basis and are intended for the use of healthcare IT professionals to download available data sets and explore the statistics as they become available.