During a speech to the World Health Care Congress on Monday, Susan Chambers, executive vice president of Wal-Mart's (NYSE: WMT) people division, said the company would improve health benefits to its employees. more»

The Bush administration is pursuing a "guided market" approach to encouraging doctors and hospitals to adopt healthcare information technology, health IT czar David Brailer said Tuesday. "I really had a profound distrust of the government getting close to individual health information," Brailer said at the World Health Care Congress. more»

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is reducing the prescription co-pay for some medicines to $3 and cutting the waiting time for part-time employees to qualify for insurance, but the changes will not be enough to offset the unaffordable deductibles charged to its minimum-wage workers, critics said Monday. more»

Day Two of the World Health Care Congress will focus on electronic health records; transparency in both price and quality; the impact of rising health -care costs on the U.S. economy, and balancing the rising costs of new technologies with the demand for innovation. more»

Microsoft today will kick off a new technology and marketing program aimed at the health insurance industry. The software company, which sees the health care market as one of its fastest growing, will release technical guidance that independent software vendors and systems integrators can use to make their applications work with Microsoft products, including Windows, SQL Server, InfoPath, SharePoint Server, and Groove. more»

Today at the World Health Care Congress, 22 companies announced support for Knowledge Driven Health Plans, Microsoft Corp.’s vision and solutions framework for the health plan industry. more»

Today at the World Health Care Congress, Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM) and VisionTree Software, Inc. announced they are collaborating for the first implementation of the Palm(R) Treo(TM) 700w smartphone running the VisionTree Conference Platform. More than 200 VIP attendees will use Treo 700w smartphones as tools to wirelessly collect, analyze and report data(1) while at the conference, which runs April 17-19. more»

In a continued blitz to shore up its image as stingy on healthcare, Wal-Mart has unveiled more worker health benefits. The discount retailer unveiled additional changes to its employee health plan at the 2006 World Health Congress in Washington, D.C. more»

National health insurance for catastrophic care, but not a government-run healthcare system was one of the key healthcare reforms urged by GlaxoSmithKline CE0 J.P Garnier Monday at the 2006 World Health Congress in Washington, D.C. more»

PRESIDENT BUSH - Tours Europa Stone Distributors, Inc. Sterling, Va.; participates in roundtable discussion on taxes and the economy, Europa Stone Distributors, Sterling, Va. more»

Don't know what to expect from this self-aggrandizingly named meeting. I'm familiar with medical association meetings, where politics and policy predominate, as well as research meetings, with endless paper presentations. more»

BEIJING and PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 10, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CIGNA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer H. Edward Hanway today received the distinguished Marco Polo Award, the highest honor bestowed by China to a foreign business leader. Hanway joined the ranks of past Marco Polo recipients, including former President George H. W. Bush, and some of the world's greatest leaders of business and industry. more»

There were more questions than answers for hospital CIOs at the World Congress Leadership Summit on mHealth in Boston last week. It shouldn't be a surprise, given the rapid rise of mobile development in the past year. The truth is, there hasn't been enough time to create hard-and-fast solutions for the key dilemmas plaguing mHealth. more»