As retail and tech giants like Amazon, Walmart and Google continue to scale healthcare efforts, hospitals and health systems are left looking to compete not just with retaining patients, but keeping their IT and other employees, too.

Here are four investments health systems recently made in innovation-focused startups, internal projects and venture funds.

Here are eight recent health IT vendor contracts and go-lives accelerating digital transformation efforts at healthcare organizations.

Ochsner Health and Xavier University of Louisiana, both based in New Orleans, are teaming up on new graduate education programs that aim to accelerate medical technology careers in healthcare.

The U.S. government is working to create secure ways for vaccinated Americans to prove their inoculation status and begin their return to normalcy. However, questions remain about how these digital vaccine credentials will be developed, made accessible and used. 

Here are eight recent partnerships between healthcare organizations and big tech companies including Amazon, Apple and Google. 

Tools that facilitated remote work and telehealth were rapidly adopted by hospitals and health systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic and quickly became integral to the success of their COVID-19 responses.

From their thoughts on how healthcare innovation has evolved throughout the pandemic to their opinions of retail disruption in the industry to their concerns about HHS' upcoming interoperability rules, here are six key quotes about the role of innovation in healthcare that executives from hospitals and health systems recently shared with Becker's Hospital Review:

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have gifted $150 million to Cambridge, Mass.-based The Broad Institute to launch a new research center focused on biology and machine learning innovations.

A widespread adoption of digital-first tools and preventive care can improve patient outcomes while reducing costs, explained Andrea Feinberg, MD, global health lead of commercial & product at Babylon, in a featured session at the Becker's Telehealth Virtual Forum March 24.

Hospitals' innovation efforts were forced to accelerate and refocus because of the pandemic's demand for more virtual care options and increased attention to social determinants of health.

Startups have been raising millions in investment in the past week to help meet the demands of the growing digital health market market.

Digital behavioral health startups secured a record $2.4 billion in venture funding in 2020, according to a recent report released by Rock Health.

San Francisco-based mental health app Ginger reached unicorn status after closing a $100 million series E funding round March 24.

If theres a silver lining to the coronavirus pandemic, it's that we've finally opened the door to new care paradigms — and opened minds to new possibilities. While we'd never wish for a pandemic to galvanize change, what’s happening now in healthcare is exciting. And it's just the tip of the iceberg of what the future holds.

The pandemic has accelerated the digitization of health. Yet as the novelty of virtual care wears off, there are four roadblocks that keep digital health from reaching its full potential, according to a March 18 MIT Sloan article.

Vaccine megasites are popping up in the parking lots of stadiums and the vacant halls of convention centers, to name a few, in efforts to get vaccines to as many people as possible. These makeshift workstations rely on cloud computing and software platforms to make it possible, according to a March 22 article published in The Wall Street Journal.

Providence's digital health spinout DexCare recently closed a $20 million investment round backed by the Renton, Wash.-based health system's innovation arm and Kaiser Permanente Ventures, according to a March 22 news release.

The Vaccination Credential Initiative, a coalition of tech giants and healthcare providers, is developing global standards for mobile apps that verify individuals' COVID-19 vaccine status, The Wall Street Journal reported March 19.

What happens to kids' brains and bodies as a result of their digital interactions? Boston Children's Hospital researchers are going to find out in a new lab, which will be funded by supporters including Optum, Instagram and TikTok.