Medical technology company Medtronic has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire rival Covidien for $42.9 billion.

"Successful projects — and this is true across the board — are clinically driven, not IT-driven," Cerner Vice President Ben Hilmes told the Athens Banner-Herald.

Unsurprisingly, northern California is home to the majority of new digital health startup companies funded in 2013, according to a Forbes report.

The Senate Finance Committee is soliciting feedback and comments on how to make digital health data easier to use, according to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune report.

West Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health's wholly owned subsidiary HealthNet connect is expanding its fiber optic network to eight hospitals in Nebraska.

Researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia are using in-home motion sensors to not only monitor older adults, but are also syncing that information to hospitals to provide comprehensive health information.

San Francisco-based CollabRx has launched CancerRx, an mHealth app meant to help oncologists and pathologists find appropriate oncology therapeutic options for patients.

Needham, Mass.-based BBK Worldwide has launched two new apps geared toward patient and site engagement for participants in clinical trials, according to a news release.

More than half the reported health IT data breaches in 2012 — 53 percent — were due to theft, according to HHS' latest Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information.

The vast majority (83 percent) of healthcare providers use cloud-based services currently and many plan on moving more systems and data to the cloud, according to a HIMSS Analytics survey to be presented this week at the Privacy and Security…