Cerner integrates patient education into EHR, athenahealth provides practice management to CareWell and IBM hardware sales on the decline — 5 key notes on health IT companies

Here are five recent news updates on key companies in health IT.

1. Microsoft announced its first wearable, the Band, has three new capabilities that will be available to users soon, including expanded cycling app capabilities, enhanced analytics and mobile integration

2. IBM has reported a decline in hardware sales for the first quarter of 2015 compared to the first quarter of 2014, a shift that is due to the company's transition of focusing on software services instead of hardware services.

3. CareWell Urgent Care, a network of urgent care practices based in Quincy, Mass., selected athenahealth's athenaOne platform, which includes the vendor's cloud-based EHR, practice management and patient engagement solutions.

4. Cerner partnered with Jive Software to implement Jive's enterprise communication and collaboration solutions into Cerner's online community forum for providers.

5. A new partnership between IT vendor Cerner and patient education solution provider Healthwise seeks to heighten patient education and engagement by integrating Healthwise solutions into Cerner's EHR. 

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