Here's the latest roundup of stories about health IT companies, including Cerner, Google and Microsoft.
1. Accolade, a health technology startup that helps employees manage their health benefits, has enlisted banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for advice on the company's impending initial public offering.
2. Athenahealth announced on Jan. 8 that Diane Bartoli will serve as the general manager of the Watertown, Mass.-based EHR vendor's mobile medical decision support services, Epocrates.
3. Kaizen Health, a startup helping healthcare providers schedule non-emergency medical transportation for patients, announced on Jan. 8 the close of its Series B funding round, led by Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health's investment arm.
4. More large companies are turning to Microsoft Azure than to market-leading Amazon Web Services for their cloud computing needs.
5. Executives at Facebook, Apple and other technology companies are standing behind their privacy practices, saying that there is a greater need for public education.
6. CareMESH, a patient data exchange platform, welcomed Ed Marx, former CIO at Cleveland Clinic, to its board of advisors.
7. Vindell Washington, MD, has joined Verily as chief clinical officer of the Google sister company's health platforms team, according to tweets from Karen DeSalvo, MD, Google's chief health officer, and Carolyn Wang, Verily's communications lead.
8. GNS Healthcare, a startup developing artificial intelligence-powered precision medicine technology, announced on Jan. 7 an extension of its Series D funding round following an investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund.
9. Phoenix-based Banner Health has partnered with Buoy Health to deploy its AI-powered digital triage tool to help patients navigate their care options online.
10. Hospitals and health systems that continue to run their computers on Windows 7 may be left vulnerable when Microsoft ends its support for the operating system on Jan. 14.
11. Facebook has disabled some ads that incorrectly claimed Truvada, an HIV prevention medication, can cause bone and kidney damage.
12. Department of Veterans Affairs will go live on its new Cerner EHR system at five sites in March 2020.
13. Liberty IT Solutions, which provides technology transformation services to government agencies, announced on Jan. 3 that it received $35 million to support the Department of Veterans Affairs' EHR modernization program.
14. Two consumers that might have had their information exposed after a data breach at LifeLab have filed lawsuits against the diagnostic testing company.
15. Employees at Google continue to cite organization shifts and changes in culture compared to when they joined the company.