Here's the latest roundup of stories about health IT companies, including Cerner, Epic and Meditech.
1. UCHealth launched a skill for the Amazon Echo that allows users to ask the Aurora, Colo.-based system's virtual assistant for information about health conditions and hospital services.
2. The Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance is collaborating with Amazon Web Services in a machine learning research sponsorship to advance innovation in cancer diagnostics, precision medicine, voice-enabled technologies and medical imaging.
3. Meditech is celebrating 50 years as a health information technology vendor this month.
4. Cerner is partnering with the Duke Clinical Research Institute to pilot the Cerner Learning Health Network, which aims to automate data collection and expand medical researchers' access to patient health information.
5. Bayer has awarded a $1.5 million grant to BioSTL, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering growth in St. Louis' bioscience, innovation and technology community.
6. A federal district judge has approved a $74 million settlement to resolve a class action lawsuit against Premera Blue Cross for a 2014 data breach.
7. Jason Windsor will serve as chief health information officer of GovernmentCIO, a government information technology and research consultant.
8. Nordic, an Epic EHR consulting company, launched a new service line to provide EHR system support to Cerner clients.
9. IBM has launched a new blockchain system with Chainyard and other healthcare companies.
10. Security researchers have discovered 11 vulnerabilities in Wind River's VxWorks operating system, which is used in approximately 2 billion IoT devices, medical devices and control systems.
11. Meditech reported $119.9 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2019, down 4 percent from $125 million during the same period last year.
12. University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington filed a proposed amendment Aug. 1 to add two more hospitals to its system-wide, $151.7 million Epic EHR implementation project.
13. Meditech is now offering its clients access to antimicrobial stewardship tools that integrate directly with the vendor's EHR systems.
14. Microsoft is using blockchain technology to make advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning more accessible.